


Fleet Yellow Jacket

by woke_up_on_derse



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, F/M, Murder Mystery, Second person POV, Threshecutioner AU, Threshecutioner!Karkat, Trollstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-20 18:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 34,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2438738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woke_up_on_derse/pseuds/woke_up_on_derse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where everyone is a troll and Jade gets transferred to a threshecutioner fleet ship to work as a bioweapons specialist. Take a guess who also works on that ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. So this is my first time uploading one of my stories to AO3. Just a fair warning in case I fuck up the formatting something awful. Also, it takes me about a week to write one chapter so bear with me here. It will get done, it just takes a while.

====> BE THE NEWBIE SCIENTIST

Your name is Jaidye Harley. You are one of the new weapons scientists being transferred to Fleet Yellow Jacket. You enjoy a number of hobbies such as flarping, gardening, hanging out with your many friends (you’re sad to say goodbye, but the transfer is such a great opportunity), and of course your interest in bioweapons! Your special talent in engineering brought you to the top of your class and to the front of the fleet recruiters minds in no time. You suppose that’s why you are standing where you are. . . 

You thought this beast looked big in the pictures you saw in your textbooks, but you had no idea how leviathan this ship truly is. It’s a lengthy ship that trifurcates into three long segments, each bright candy red, resembling The Empress’s very own 2x3dent. On the ground, it looks like it was photoshopped into the world because of the way it warps your perception of the world around it. You hold your hand up to grasp the door frame for stability before you even realized you were shaking. This is it. This is where you will spend the next 5 whole solar sweeps of your life. Something clicks into place in your mind and you realize that you will spend both Drone Season and your Ascension here. You feel woozy. There’s a fair bit of nervousness in your system (far more than you are accustomed to) but also enough excitement to lift you off your feet. You take one last breath and enter.

Inside, there’s a coldblood writing down the names of your fellow graduates and checking things off on a clipboard, she has the forearms of a cholerbear. You let her woman-handle you as she jots things down. In the background you see the ships main cargo, threshecutioners. Three female and two male threshies eye you suspiciously. Most of their stares are distrustful; except the girl on the front right, she’s blatantly checking you out. The living muscle that was inspecting you grunts dismissively and the threshecutioners disperse. You take that as your cue to leave. The girl that apparently thinks you’re hot gives a flippant shrug and resumes her normal business, heading into a side-corridor with the others. 

You don’t know where you’re going. You just kinda waddle around with the other wide-eyed and overwhelmed kids. Some of the people who were lucky enough to be transferred with their friends are whispering to each other, a few are speaking loud enough you can overhear snippets and phrases of what they’re talking about before their voices tense up and go too high for you to hear without leaning in; saying things like “I’m gonna throw up.” and “don’t know what I’ll do without my ___-mom/dad.”. 

Someone finds you eventually, a man who appears to be a secretary by the looks of his uniform. You’re all lead down a narrow capillary of a hallway that opens up into an open, sterilized, and circular pocket. The lights are so harsh you think they might be sanitizing the room by killing all the bacteria with UV rays. There you are given a short speech by two well-dressed women. You later receive a nametag, a map, and two keys. One key opens up your room, and the other gives you access to a lab you share with three of your peers.

The co-workers you’ve been assigned are listed on a board. Sinomi Hurkte, Mitoba Fushig, Larken Sangot. You remember Larken. Larken was your partner in a group project once. She’s a fairly hard worker who was pretty smart on her own terms but she likes to lead, not follow. You shared a B+ with her on that assignment. You have no idea who Sinomi or Mitoba are but you don’t worry too much about who they are because you’re certain you can get along with anyone. You’re all allowed to check out your rooms as long as you meet back here in two hours. You look at your phone. It’s 2:32 AM. The day has hardly started and everyone already looks dead on their feet. It’s all happened so fast. You open up your map and shuffle off to your new room.

Somehow, you manage to find your room with only minimal help from a kind janitor you never quite caught the name of.

The ‘coon in the corner looks standard and certainly functional (though not at all like the one you had at your hive), the couch is a kinda tacky red and gold pattern that looks like someone ripped it straight off a bus seat but it’s soft enough, and the room even has its own adjacent bathroom connected to it that you don’t share with anyone (you were worried about having to share quarters after learning you would be sharing labs). It looks nice but fuck if you know what proper housekeeping procedures are so anything would probably look “nice” to you.

You cease ignoring the elephant in the room, the bed. You never had a bed before and you can’t stop the olive blush from leaping onto your face like a feral purrbeast when you realize that you are 8 sweeps old and should probably get accustomed to it. You ignore the elephant in the room again. 

You fling your few possessions (you were allowed to bring a single bag with clothes, toiletries, and whatever items of a nostalgic nature that you could fit into the bag with it still being able to close properly) onto the couch with a wide, arching, swing of your arm. You throw yourself onto the couch shortly after, thinking you may as well lay down to think about how many important moments you just lived through in merely minutes. You are Jaidye Harley, you are on a Threshecutioner Fleet ship, and dreams really do come true. 

Life is such a dream, in fact, that you don’t even notice when you start to drift off. 

_______________________________*************_____________________________

 

When you return back to the land of the living, it’s about a half hour until you are needed back at the meeting room. You practice introducing yourself in the mirror on the off chance that you need to introduce yourself to your lab buddies today. You start out serious and pleasant, but end up just making silly faces ranging from “6-sweep-old girl selfie” to “Daymare on Elm Street”. You dick around in front of the mirror for about 3 minutes. 

Once you’re done, you straighten out your hair and head down the hall in the general direction of the meeting room. You have almost 20 minutes left, and you’re confident that you can saunter back in time, even with wrong turns. 

You make an inevitable fuckup and end up in a totally different wing.

The kind janitor from last time finds you again. After a minute of walking in moderately comfortable silence, you ask him his name this time. 

“Johenn. My last name is Egbert but no one ever uses it. Once you’re here for even a sweep, people forget the formality.” He cracks you a toothy smile and you gladly return it. “And your name is....?”

“Jaidye Harley. And, uh, haven’t been here long enough to have anything informal.”

“Alright, fair enough. What did your friends on the home planet call you?”

“I can’t say it aloud in polite company.” You both laugh a little. He looks remarkably young for someone who is apparently at least a sweep older than you. You don’t say anything because it’s none of your business if he’s really as old as he says he is.

“Well, then. What have you been here long enough to know?”

“The coach in my room smells like Lysol trying to cover up spilled wine.”

“That’s a good start. Being aware of your surroundings and all that jazz. Not very much I can expect you to know when you’ve only been here for 3 hours and you spent one of them asleep....... Would you like to know some survival secrets?”

“Sure. I’d love to leech some wisdom from you.”

“The people here are here to get ahead. Unless they’re in a different field, they’ll gladly step on top of you to get a couple inches up. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust anyone, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

“All my Egberts in one basket.” you smirk.

“Next time you want to say something silly, consider not saying it.”

You snort at that as you turn the corner. The alcove swings into view at that moment and you remember that that was the whole point of this excursion, not to talk to Johenn.

“Thanks for the help! ....Uh, what area of this ship do you work in? Just wondering, not for any weird or stalky reasons.”

“You’re welcome. And just about everywhere. There are only four other janitors here and my room is in this wing so I tend to frequent this one.”

“Oh, okay. I guess I’m just asking how I’m supposed to find you again if I need someone to talk to.”

“Or if you get lost.”

“That too.”

Johenn pauses for a moment, thoughtful.

“You could try screaming really loud.”

“Thanks.” you say flatly.

“You are certainly welcome, Jaidye.”  
With that, the first kind-of-sort-of friend you’ve made turns a perfect 180 degrees and heads back to pick up where he left off with his actual job.

You look around the room. It’s mostly flat except for an amphitheatre-style hollow where the seating is long rows pushed back up against the wall in a layered way built into the floor itself. The seating area is a light, wiggler pink (just like the walls) and the flat area is beige, unlike the rest of the ship’s vibrant red color scheme. The flat area also has a white table, supposedly for live demonstrations. You look at the people in here. There were about 20 of you transferred but only 16 of you are in the meeting area already. You check your phone. It’s now 4:27 and approximately 4 of you have yet to arrive. You, however, are early and have decided to blow 3 minutes on people-watching. A couple of your peers are sitting on counters and looking up at the ceiling. You look up there as well and wonder how the ceiling could possibly hold someone’s interest for that long, it’s just a pinkish, flat thing with some artistic indentations. Others are watching people as well and avoid meeting your eyes. Still more sit cross-legged on the floor, chatting up their friends. You wish your friend was still here, even though it’s selfish and might get him fired, and then where would you be? You watch someone repeatedly try (and fail) to throw a wadded up paper in the waste basket from about 15 or so feet away.

At 4:29, a group of four scrambles in. They’re laughing and clapping each other on the back. In the middle is Larken. You would have never imagined that she would be so irresponsible as to arrive one minute before she was needed. Only a minute early is practically late. You would tell her so, as she is your partner and you have to look out for each other, but the meeting is about to start and you don’t think you can really drive that message home in time. Instead, you take a seat on one of the rows and wait for the women from the first time to return.

At the meeting you learn that this fleet will be tasting the front lines of one of the many wars Her Imperious Condescension has initiated. In Her infinite wisdom, she engendered a war for the planet Unjuin with the natives there. You had known when you signed up that you would see combat, why else would you be on a threshecutioner fleet, but you hadn’t even heard the name Unjuin before. Must be a new mission. A really new mission. You shiver and bounce on your heels a bit when you realize that this will probably be one of the first ships to arrive.

“We know little of the people there; but their technology is primitive in comparison to ours.” says the one with a dark blue necklace. “We should be able to overtake them with few casualties. Your job is to limit those casualties as much as possible, of course, by use of bioweapons.”.

The one with the cerulean necklace decaptchalogues a map. The map shows the urban and rural areas, as well as lists the flora and fauna there. You listen with rapt attention as she tells of a species that has no apparent caste structure. They all appear to be maroonbloods as far as their probes can tell. That might be difficult. You don’t know if anyone on the whole ship is that low. Samples of that blood will be highly envied, if there are any at all. 

You briefly entertain the idea that your lab buddies may have connections. 

The cerulean finishes up by telling you the deadline for the rough draft blueprint. Someone, a short one with twin pigtails, asks a question, “Are we allowed to work in groups?”. 

It feels like you’re 6 sweeps old again when the dark blue woman responds with “You may work in groups of up to five. You may also work alone if you think you can still get it done in time.”.

Working alone sounds like the worst idea ever. You are certainly competent on your own, but being with others seems like fun. Way funner. The funnerest.

You are dismissed. 

You decide that the best course of action would be, well, action. Getting started on a project the day it was assigned was always your style. It seems like it’s everyone else’s style as well because at least half of the new employees are heading down the same channel as you to get to the laboratory wing. Most of you are too worn-out to even attempt conversation.

When you get there, you are pleasantly surprised by the state everything is in. You weren’t expecting to see broken glass or stains everywhere, but somehow you are still taken aback by the absence of any imperfections. You make a mental note to tell Johenn that if he cleaned lab 9, he did an excellent job. You visually take in all the new-ish equipment. The standards are all there; scalpels, microscopes, scales, beakers, a sink, et cetera, but there are also things you never learned how to use. These items were always out of reach in school, put up on the big kids shelf. You suppose now would be an excellent time to learn what they do. You are gently tapping a globe-shaped part of a wicked tool when someone else comes in.

“Who’re you?” she asks as though she doesn’t really care much what you answer. You answer anyway.

“Jaidye Harley. I also work here. And you are?”

“Sinomi.” she steps to the side of you to examine the part of the room you don’t take up. She looks mildly impressed despite her obvious attempts to appear apathetic.

Sinomi is a short girl with cute ears and curly, teal-highlighted hair trying to cover them. It always struck you as a bit odd when highbloods colored their hair like that, especially when they’re not even that high. 

You set down the globe instrument you were holding and turn to her. She has her back to you. “What are you planning on doing for the project? That is, if you have an idea already.” you ask regardless of her disinterest.

You can practically hear the cogs in her head turning as she mulls over whether she should chew you out for being presumptuous or take the advantage and pretend she has an idea. 

“I don’t know yet. I just barely got here. Give me a minute.” she snips.

“...... I was thinking we could try a blood weapon. You know, ‘cause they all have-”

“ -The same blood. I know. But where the hell are we gonna get maroon blood on this ship. Besides, even if there was some, I’m sure everyone is thinking the same way.”

You think about that for a minute. “Maybe not. I mean, if they are all thinking that everyone else is thinking that, maybe no one will try it.” you suggest hopefully.

“........We should run it by the others before getting hasty.” Sinomi acquiesces. The implication that you will all be working together doesn’t slip by you and you smile a bit at how easy it was to nab her as your partner.

Minutes pass by in silence waiting for the others to arrive.

Larken shows up next. She smiles good-naturedly upon seeing you and says hi before briefly introducing herself to Sinomi. When Sinomi merely nods after Larken’s intro, you take it as your cue to tell Larken you plan on doing a blood weapon.

“So like, a poison or...?” Larken inquires.

“Honestly, anything. A poison was where I was going with that, but I’m willing to compromise on just using blood as a mode of transmission.” you shrug.

“We were waiting for us all to get here before making any rash decisions. You know Mitoba?” says Sinomi. 

Larken shakes her head. Larken has a pretty head; it’s a nice shape, a strong jaw with a long neck and straight hair to frame it. She walks over to the whiteboard and picks up a marker. “Blood Poison” she writes in big, bubbly letters.

“I’m sure we can make decisions by ourselves. Small ones.” she pulls up a chair and lounges very casually, you do the same “What do we want to go with?”

“I think we can ask the threshies if any of them have maroon blood. I don’t think us new recruits have anything below olive.” you add, trying to be helpful. 

“And threshies would?” Do you know how physically demanding their jobs are? No lowblood could do it, much less a maroon.” says Sinomi.

“That’s casteist! Besides, I think it’s a wonderful idea and it can’t hurt to try it.” says Larken. 

“It’ll hurt when they throw all 300 pounds of themselves into punching you when you ask.” Sinomi mumbles, knowing she has lost. You beam. 

You all write your names and phone numbers up on the board for when Mitoba comes in. Sinomi leaves to hit the slime immediately after, but you and Larken draw cute pictures of barkbeasts up on the board. Larken draws you with barkbeast ears. You draw Larken in a panda kigurumi. None of those pictures are really that good, just doodles like the kind you find on math tests in the margins, but it’s a nice reminder that Larken is still your friend. You say goodbye because by now it’s about time to eat dinner and finally have a full day’s rest, and promise to meet back here at 10 PM the next night. Tomorrow, you are going blood hunting.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry this took as long as it did. Real life happened and this fic was put on the back burner. The good news is that the next chapter should come along a lot quicker. Thanks for all the support thus far! :)

You arrive on time to be early. Really early. About a half hour early. You woke up 5 hours ago and just kind of messed around on the internet until an hour before you had to be here. Remembering the long walk you had encountered before, you had left a good chunk of time to navigate your way here. Turns out it’s only a five-minute walk when you know what you’re doing. 

You hoist yourself up onto the table behind you. Might as well start your stretching routine before anyone gets here. You flex your toes in front of you, rolling the joints in a way that won’t hurt. You let your eyes wander. On the board is a new number under the name M. Fushig. Nothing else. How silly to not even explain why you weren’t there to greet your partners in person. Probably going for the “aloof enigma” type. You roll your eyes in a manner that can only be described as “loud”. You put the number in your phone, and text the plan to them regardless. That gives you the idea to also text Sinomi about the plan today as she wasn’t there to hear it. You add plenty of smilies to your text to let her know you see right through her indifferent facade. Immediately after you put your phone in your pocket, it rumbles. 

“k” reads Sinomi’s text. You smile. 

___________________________*******************_____________________________

Sinomi arrives before Larken, but not by much. Larken arrives two minutes late but you hardly care because it’s not like it’s an official meeting or anything. You check the text to Mitoba. They haven’t replied. You huff loudly and announce that Mitoba may not even show up. Larken pulls a sour face and Sinomi shrugs.

“If they don’t wanna be here, I don’t want them here.” she explains. 

You’d argue if you thought it would change anything. If they come, they come. 

Everyone pulls up a chair idly, no cue needed. Larken uncaps a marker and lays her hand out flat. It’s so like her to passively take a leadership stance; it’s as if she doesn’t even feel the need to ask if she’s in charge anymore. It rubs you the wrong way. You came up with what little you have by yourself. Not trying to make a fuss, you stand up and head towards the board. 

Pushing one of the many test tubes racks out of the way, you sit on the corner of the sink and ask “Any ideas before we begin?”

Sinomi’s high voice snaps your attention back to her when she says “It’s not like we can just waltz our way around and ask all the threshies their blood color without it seeming like we’re aggressing them.” 

“True.” You reply, “But we don’t necessarily need to confront anyone directly.”

“Yeah. What about just setting up some kind of donation drop box?” Larken chimes.

“You’re kidding.” Sinomi says, voice flat. This is not a question.

You jump to the defense, “You act as though it’s a universal truth that threshecutioners are not generous.”

“They’re government workers. Selfish.” Sinomi makes a flustered and erratic hand gesture trying to illustrate her point.

Larken gasps. “They donated their lives for the Empire.”

That shuts Sinomi up real good. To say anything after that would not only be treason, but practically heresy.

“.....So, we’re all on the same page?” you ask.

Larken looks expectantly at Sinomi, who sighs as if she’s accepting death’s sweet embrace. “I guess.” she says with an unnecessary heaviness. 

_____________________*****************************________________________

Not much time is spent actually crafting the donation box or the sign that simply reads “This dropbox is for donations of maroon blood for science, and for the better of the Empire”. However, all this extra time is sucked up by trying to hang it on the wall.

Larken is already down for the count, nursing her turgid thumb. She got a bit overzealous and hit her own hand twice. You don’t know how that could even happen or that someone could make that painful mistake more than once, but here stands the proof. Or sits, rather, against the far wall, sulking.

Sinomi takes another swing of the hammer and ruins another nail. She’s too strong and the nails keep bending and twisting under her force. How the hell is this chick a tealblood? You really don’t want to take that hammer away from her. 

“Hey, Sinomi. Could I give it a shot?” you ask.

Sinomi appears to remember that there are other people in the hallway with her. Pulled from her frenzy, she huffs and passes you the hammer.

It only takes you four tries before you’re satisfied. You have a learning curve you’re quite proud of. Larken pulls the twine out of her sylladex and lays it over the nail in the wall, then hangs the dropbox by it much like a picture frame. You really hope it stays. It would be so mean if someone stole it. 

You don’t want to sound like you’re shirking your responsibilities by not calling together a fruitful meeting, but you have no idea what else to do. Sinomi takes the social cues that she isn’t needed anymore and slinks away in surprisingly fluid motions. Pretending you didn’t see it, you turn to Larken.

“So........ How long do you think it’ll take?” you ask.

“I dunno.” she contributes to the pseudo-conversation. 

“.........”

“What if they have a problem with finding syringes? Or vials to hold it all in?” you try. You honestly aren’t wondering as much as you’re trying to kill time.

Larken pauses regardless to give it thought you honestly don’t think it deserves.

“We should put our numbers on it.” you say.

“I don’t want just anyone calling me! Last time I put my number out in the open where everyone could use it, I had to change it ‘cause I kept getting bulge pics from people I didn’t know.”

“Okay. Okay. Maybe we could put our block numbers on it instead?” 

She gives it thought, her nostrils flaring out a bit. “I don’t really like that idea either, but if you want to do it, I won’t stop you.” she states with a sense of finality. She turns to leave and waves behind her back. “See you tomorrow! Tell me if anyone shows up by your block unannounced!” 

You fish out your pencil and begrudgingly slap “Contact Block 216 for more information” onto the sign. You know you’re being hard on her for not wanting to do something as grossly careless as putting personal information on a big sign down the main hall, but you’re still a little peeved at the lack of commitment. 

On the bright side, you both know that you’re the responsible one now. 

_________________________**********************_____________________________

You’re reading the newest SBaHJ comic (you’re very proud to say that you know the genius behind this work, Daevve Stride, personally) when you hear a thud and a weak hiss outside your block’s door. You listen closely, not wanting to get enmeshed in drama but also not be a clueless bystander to a possible crime. 

When you press your ear against the door you hear “-wrong door?” “Not possible. I wrote this shit down.” says a different voice. The previous hissing had stopped and you wonder if the one who did it is okay. 

A much louder thud hits you right smack in the ear. Shit. You recoil for a second, hurt and also ashamed of eavesdropping. It takes you only a moment before you realize that they weren’t trying to hit you, they were knocking on your door. You open the door quickly so they don’t get impatient.

Two threshies stand outside your door and your mood shifts rapidly to utter delight. They must have came here to give a blood donation! You clap your hands together and greet them with a “Hello! What can I do for you?”

The one on the left, a boy in a sleeveless tank top who looked even younger than you, met your gaze and then deliberately flicked his eyes down. You followed with your own eyes and saw that you were wrong. There aren’t two threshies at your door, there are three! The third one lies slumped on the ground. Deep maroon bruises cover his upper body and he appears to be suffering from a blow to the head. Your eyes spring back to meet the sleeveless one’s. 

“I’m not a docterror!” you tell him. When your outburst is only met with confusion from the boy, you frantically turn to the other threshie, a girl about your age, in hopes of finding understanding. 

“We were not mistaken. We know you aren’t a docterror. You’re a scientist. Here is your test subject. You’re welcome.” she says in short bursts of noise. 

“.......... Thank you.” you try to be grateful, “Who is he?”

“A total sack of bulges.” the boy scoffs, “No one in our fleet likes him and once we heard you needed someone of his blood, how could we pass up the opportunity?”

“We even shut him up.” she kicks him a little closer to your door, “For you.”

“Thank you so much........ It’s exactly what I needed.” you smile awkwardly for them while internally shrieking. You really should be more grateful. They went through all this trouble to get you an almost endless supply of rare material, and only a few hours after you asked for it. How sweet.

“You’re very welcome.” the girl says with a curt nod. They turn to leave. 

“But what is his actual name? Where should I return him?” you call after them.

“His name is Karkat Vantas and it’s better if you don’t return him at all.” the boy calls back, playful. 

And just as soon as they were here, they are gone. You open your door wider and drag in Mr. Vantas. He’s a bit long for your couch but there is no way in all the conquered planets that you’re putting a stranger on your concupiscent platform. Once he’s stable and semi-comfortable, you press two fingers against his neck. He has a pulse. You step back to examine him better. For an apparently awful person, he has a pleasant face. You’ve seen better, though. His garb is almost the exact same as the boy that you “met” a second ago but it actually fits Vantas, while the other boy appeared to be drowning in his. A black, sleeveless shirt covers his broad chest and his “stretchy” white shorts barely contain his monster thighs. His feet hang over the end of the couch but once you get a better look, you can see that he’s strapped into heels that would not pass through airport security. You’re pretty sure those are used to step on necks because there is literally no other advantage to walking on what appear to be 5-inch knives.  
You push back his gravity-defying hair to peer at his head injuries. You count off the individual spots of impact and are surprised this giant was taken down with only four hits. He’ll be fine. 

You’ve decided that taking blood samples from unconscious people is against your ethics. Also, it would probably get you killed if you woke up a threshecutioner, who was being attacked last thing he knew, in a new place with a needle in his arm. You’re patient, you can wait. 

You lean against the wall and cross your legs at the ankle. Pulling out your phone, you restart where you left off. 

_________________________**********************_____________________________


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who even knows how often I produce chapters anymore? It is a fun ride and you shouldn't go about polluting God's miracles with your curiosity.   
> (I'm so sorry for how slowly these come out but you will just have to bear with me, as always)

Every time you ease back into a sense of security, you hear the springs of the couch creak or a mumble and you are reminded that he’s there. You know it’s silly to be so unnerved in your own room, but you can’t help it. When you hear a louder-than-normal sigh or breath, you instantly grab the nearest bludgeoning object and hold it close like a thief holds their goods in a particularly shady pawn shop. That’ll convince the poor kid that you mean him no harm. 

Eventually, you just tie him up. 

He’s swaddled in a blanket much like a straight jacket would swaddle if those still existed and you have the upperhand if he chooses to aggress you. You’ve given up on absently messing around on your phone. You sit a little ways away from him and have a broom outstretched between the two of you. You prod him a little. He doesn’t wake. You rehearse what you’re going to say. 

“My name is Jaiyde Harley and I’m here to take a sample of your blood for experimentation.” you say aloud with your nicest voice. It doesn’t sound convincing, even to you. You try a different approach.

“Hello. My name is Jaidye Harley and your teammates brought you here to do some science with me.” That sounds a bit better.

“Ugh. Holy fuck, I can hear the smiley face at the end of that sentence.” he answers back.

You nearly shit yourself upon hearing that. You are pretty sure he noticed you jump a whole foot off the ground, regardless of his semi-conscious state. 

“Where am I?” his voice sound like a cat trying to purr but choking on gravel instead.

“Uh. You’re in block 216.”

“...”

“Are you okay? Can I get you anythi-”

“Of course I’m not fucking okay!” he turns to his side and continues, a few decibels lower “I didn’t even notice it was a fight until I had my ass handed to me.” 

Oh dear. You would giggle at how sulky he sounds if that wouldn’t get you killed. You’re reminded of a 3-sweep-old recounting their defeat to their friends while making sure everyone knows it wasn’t a fair fight because they weren’t “in their element”. You throw him a bone anyway.

“You suffered some pretty bad head injuries and you were out for a while. Do you need some water? It might help.” 

“........ Yes.” he sounds like he’s biting back a scream.

While you’re filling up a water glass for him in the bathroom, you make sure to grab your tranquilizer gun and stow it away in the pocket of your lab coat. He might be hostile. 

You set the glass of water in front of him and he stares at you like you’re the dumbest pile of shit he’s ever seen.

“You’re the dumbest pile of shit I’ve ever seen.” he looks down at himself. “How the hell am I supposed to hold that?”

He doesn’t say a word as you unwrap his upper torso, only look embarrassed that he needs help. A clearly independent person. Once he’s unwrapped, he starts drinking, obviously trying to look controlled when he wants nothing more than to take the whole thing down in one swig. You talk to him while he drinks.

“So you know where we’re headed, right? It’s this plant called Unjuin. They have these creatures there who all have the same blood...” you ramble off as you pull out a syringe. His look of alarm wouldn’t slip by even the densest of cullbait. 

He sets down the glass. “If you honestly think I’m up for donating some of my precious, awesome blood-” his voice quakes like a newly-planted tree experiencing it’s first windstorm. 

“We would greatly appreciate it.” Damn your kindness for even giving him a choice. If you hadn’t unwrapped his torso, you wouldn’t need his permission.

“No. No way in all the galaxies we’ve conquered are you getting at me with that.” his voice is stern this time.

“Now you’re just being selfish!” you’re pissed at his stubbornness. It used to be funny, but it’s become flat out unreasonable. You take a step closer. He flinches.

“You’ll regret it if you go any further with that idea.” he practically snarls as he stands up, connecting his feet with solid ground. You think he’d look ridiculous with the scowl he’s currently sporting if it weren’t so effective in intimidating you..... No! Bad Jaidye. You won’t be bullied out of your project so easily. You stride forward, bursting even your own comfort zone, good and proper. 

“I’ve tried being civil,” really, you have “but you’re leaving me with no choice. You pledged to protect The Empire with your life, but now you’re being a weenie. Buck up!” you punctuate that last word by grabbing his shoulder. Too late to back out now, you find a vein and plunge into it in about a nanosecond. 

At that moment, he sways hard and slams his elbow against your collarbone. You stumble back. The syringe is dislodged from his shoulder and falls. Your world spins in slow motion, neither of you making a move. The syringe makes no sound when it lands, hitting only carpet, but you hear his whole world shatter. Red. Not maroon, red. When you look up, your eyes meet his, cold and focused. 

He lunges at you. Not in an attempt to stop you from drawing blood, but in order to stop you from breathing. He’s going to kill you. You’re pushed to the ground and he settles his knees on your thighs and encircles his hands about your neck, pressing his thumbs into the recess at the base. You try to scream but, predictably, you can’t. You hit him over the head with the heel of your palm but you can’t get a good enough angle to actually do damage. You try to stand up but your feet can’t find purchase. The lack of air makes your vision foggy, but you can still see his face very clearly right in front of yours. He doesn’t have the standard “slasher smile’ but instead wears a near-blank expression lightly dusted with remorse. You try to shove him off but your hands hit your pockets first and you rediscover something far more useful. You still have your tranq gun. 

In the few seconds it takes to wrangle the gun out of it’s cloth prison, your vision starts to swim violently. You can’t see where you’re aiming, and the last thing you want is to shoot yourself, so you feel up his stomach (you don’t want to kill the poor kid by shooting his brain) to get a better idea of what you’re dealing with. You can’t see the intricacies of his face whilst you’re doing this, but you can make a fair bet that he isn’t really focused on any part of his body except his clasped hands. He doesn’t notice a single thing until you press the cold muzzle up against his lower abdomen. He must recognize the unique texture of the gun, because he immediately responds. 

“Oh.” he says, softly. It’s the last thing you hear before you shoot him.

You’re grateful tranq guns aren’t loud because your ears are already thrumming without the extra stimuli. Your gasp once you finally breathe again is probably louder than the actual shot was. You heave Karkat off your chest and collapse on all fours. 

“Well that was an adventure.” you say to yourself once you get your breathing under control. 

You lay on the floor face-up now. There is no moment of stark realization, but more of a creeping sense of unease once you come to terms with the fact that you have the descendant of the Signless completely at your mercy. Your sense of duty is screaming at you to kill him, he is demon spawn and a threat to genetic purity. Your common sense agrees for more selfish reasons; if anyone finds out you’re sheltering a mutant, you’ll be killed for being in cahoots. But your gentler side is far too compassionate for that. He’s just a kid. He made it this whole way, and now you’re gonna kill him because of something he has no control over? You tug at your hair in frustration. 

Besides, he tried to kill you. You can’t just shrug that off. What if he tries to do that again once he wakes up? Where would you keep him while he’s still out? Where would he sleep? In here? In your recuperacoon? On your bed? That’s crazy talk. You start pacing around your block, carefully avoiding stepping on Mr. Pretty. You lean down to pull out the tranq dart and end up checking for a pulse, half hoping he would already be dead so the choice would be made for you. He has a pulse. Your scream of frustration comes out as a sigh of relief. You feign surprise despite having no one to convince.

You try to rationalize, knowing full well that this situation is far from rational. You could hand him in and not have to deal with the consequences. He would be killed, you know that, but you wouldn’t have to do it yourself. Maybe that’s the morally right response anyway? Maybe housing a possible treasonist is the morally bankrupt decision? You don’t know. You try to convince yourself that he is a bad person but you just can’t. He was angry and tried to kill you, but the attempted murder part was kinda the natural response and no one was ever culled for being a sourpuss. Ugh.

A couple times you get really close to just offing him for causing you this headache, but then when you swing your gun (the real one with the real bullets) into place and you make the mistake of looking at his face. His mouth is in a comically perfect “o” shape and it’s.........personable. You can’t kill something that looks like a person. He may not be fully troll because of his mutation but he certainly is a person.

And don’t even get you started on how pretty he is. He was above average before, but now every time you look at him again he manages to gain, like, 4 pretty levels without you noticing. Fuck him. How dare he? He’s supposed to be a gross little ogre-like thing with a pug face and gnarly hands. That’s just what cullbait is supposed to look like. It’s not up for debate. 

After a few minutes, you give yourself a break. You just aren’t thinking right because you need to eat and exercise. You’ll make the big decision when you get back. This is important and you’ll give it the time it needs. At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you head out the door for your first meal of the night.


	4. Chapter 4

The food hall is located halfway between the meeting area and the actual kitchen. It contains several long tables that hold anywhere from 20 people to almost twice that and one of them appears to currently be at max capacity. You must have come a bit late. That feels unfair because you just barely slept while you were watching over Karkat during his comatose hours so you can’t even say you slept in. You meander over to the food line and slap some blueblood gunk onto your tray. Some of the stuff smells kinda good but you don’t recognize any of it, choosing this moment to be yet another scientific exploration.

When you step out of the line with a tray full of what looks to you to be inedible decorations, you find a nice quiet space to be alone with your thoughts. You really need to work this out before he wakes up again. You figure you have a few hours but that’s not much, even a few days would feel like a rushed amount of time to figure out where you stand on the culling penalty. The irony of a cullbait threshecutioner is a bit too obvious to even be funny, more of an oxymoron than a joke. Threshies are here to ensure genetic purity, not threaten it. You wonder how he even got through this far as a mutant. He must have stayed inside a lot when he was younger to safeguard himself against spilling any blood. Now that you think about it, it must have been tremendously difficult. He couldn’t cry, blush, scrape his knee, or even get too exhausted lest his cheeks light up candy red. You don’t want to think of how many people he may have had to kill to keep his secret safe. Maybe killing him would be the best choice if he’s willing to kill like that, assuming that he did? How long could he guard his blood? He’s a threshie, he’ll be wounded soon enough, right? He wouldn’t be able to guard it during drone season, right? Hopy shit, he’s young enough that he hasn’t gone through drone season. He must be your age.

You realize you haven’t even been eating this whole time, just staring at the far wall intensely. You check to see if anyone had noticed. No one. You slide some of the solid food on your fork. It flops around a little like a fish on a hook despite clearly being either dead or never having lived. The inside tastes meaty but it has a caramelized amber crust. You don’t know how you feel about that. You complete the motion several more times before you’re swindled back into your subconscious. 

You get as far with your imagination as the completely crazy idea that you could just send him back where he came from before you are jostled. You face the direction the sudden noise came from before your eyes refocus and allow you to see who’s there. It’s Larken. She slips into the spot next to you in one fluid motion and lands with a loud whoomph. 

“So, anybody show up uninvited?” she probes. 

You don’t even hesitate before saying “Yeah, actually.” You scream internally once you realize what you’ve done. You dunce! You weren’t supposed to tell her that. Now she’s gonna ask why you don’t have any maroon blood and you’re totally unprepared to give an excuse. Maybe you should just tell the truth? Is it worth the trouble of saving this kid’s ass?

“I didn’t get any blood off of him though.” you say before she can ask.

“Why?” Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. Now is the moment of truth.

“Because he wasn’t even maroon.” as you say this, Larken gives you a bewildered look.

“Why did he-” she starts.

“-He didn’t do it by himself. He was dragged there by his teammates.” 

“Well then what is he?”

“Dark blue.” you say before you can stop yourself. Why are you defending this kid? There’s a moment of silence.

“........ Weird. Why was he dragged in then? Some kind of prank?” 

You force a laugh. “Hah. Probably a hazing ritual ‘cause he was kinda young. He was also kinda bitchy so maybe they just hated him.” Larken laughs a real laugh at that.

The rest of your conversation goes on as you would imagine; just small talk. Larken talks about her neighbors and the cute janitor she ran into. You supply that janitor’s name and the both of you go into a gentle ebb and flow about the thoughts you have on this guy. You talk a bit less than her so you finish your food much faster and say goodbye. You dump the remainder of your food into the garbage and head back to your block. 

The first thing you do once you get back is tie Vantas up again. You take extra special care to make him comfortable-looking because you can’t imagine how wildly terrified he’ll be once he wakes up tied and with his secret exposed but you can certainly try your best to ease it up. He’s laying down on the couch and you put a plush meowbeast near his head as a sign that you mean no harm; the worst he can do is rip it and to be honest Madam Buttonpaws was always your least favorite anyways. He doesn’t make a sound as you move him around, not even the murmuring or sighing of the last time you knocked him out. You reflect on how odd it is that you’ve had this kid passed out in your room more than once. Last time was better. You check his pulse occasionally, worried. He’s certainly alive but you worry he may be out for a long time. What if it lasts for the whole rest of the night and he wakes up during the day when you’re asleep? You could die. You consider putting a sticky note on his head saying “I mean you no harm” but discard the idea because no one checks their forehead before murdering someone. You could put him in the ablution trap and splash him around a bit to wake him up. You see no downside to this other than the hot kid gets wet and that’s hardly a downside at all. In a moment, you are already putting in the stopper and filling up the basin. 

When you decide the water is warm enough, you half-drag-half-carry him over to the trap’s side and heave him over. He hits the water with a loud splosh and comes to life immediately, gasping and sputtering. His eyes are wild and accusing. You try to pick him up to drag him out but he squirms away from you. 

“Hey, c’mon. Just trying to help you up.” you say as you plunge your whole arm in. This wasn’t very well thought out because you still have your long sleeves on and it’s too late to roll them up now.

“You’re trying to fucking kill me!” he gargles those last two words because his evading dodge couldn’t avoid sloshing some water up to meet him. He’s really making a mess. You sigh; it was probably unavoidable.

“Actually, I was trying to wake you up. Now that I’ve succeeded, I’m trying to get you out of the water. Fun time is over, buddy.”

“Okay, yeah. I try to kill you and then you knock me out, tie me up, and throw me in an ablution trap for my better good. I believe that story.”

“Hopy shit! Have a little faith. There are some good people in the world.” you say defensively. You’re being a bit too offended by the implication that you’re trying to kill him for someone who was just about to kill him, but hey, he messed up your floor and you’re allowed to be pissy.

He stops squirming for a moment a gives you a funny look. “Hopy? Who the fuck says ‘hopy’?”

“I got it from a very dear friend of mine who sometimes types faster than he can correct it. It’s none of your business that I took an endearing typo on as my own.”

He seems to sense no ill will from you and slumps down into the water. He looks silly with the water coming up all the way to his grimacing mouth. A wave laps up to his nose spontaneously and he snorts it back out with much the same force as a disgusted hoofbeast. You laugh and join his snort with one of your own.

“You coming out any time soon or are you a seadweller prince now?” 

His face grows colder and harder. “You know what I am.”

There’s a silence. You can’t say that it doesn’t bother you and you can’t say that you don’t know. “Yup.” you say, for lack of a better word.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Slam dunks this chapter into the ground* Nothing can hurt me anymore

You lean against the wall, knowing it would take a while to convince him to leave. Besides, the last thing you want is appear threatening. You let out a sigh.

“....Yup? That’s it? My life is in your hands and you think it’s a good time to be flippant? Fuck you. Fuck the stars that aligned to create this situation. Fuck my ancestors for allowing a freak like me to be hatched. Fuck this ship. Fuck me.” he sighs with such dramaticism it appears as though his ghost is trying just as hard as the rest of him to escape.

You get that he’s under a lot of stress (who wouldn’t be in his place) but he’s also kind of a wiggler.

“You’re being a dummy. And a drama king. King Karkat of Dumb Theatre Student Island.” you don’t want to leave any of your thoughts vague.

He sputters like he’s been hit in the gut. Karkat seems to have forgotten to be sour when he says, in all his infinite wisdom, “Am not!”

He realized that he sounded like he was five when you laughed openly at him. The scowl that engulfs his face hardly comes as a shock anymore. Man, what an ego! You extend your forearm out to him once again, patient. He weighs his options and seems to realize that if you wanted to kill him, you would do it even without his consent. Reluctantly, he takes your hand, a symbol of trust. Water sloshes out the side of the trap as he rises and you can’t ignore the thought nibbling on your brain that says he looks almost like a legendary hero with all the dignity and beauty that abounds around him. Then you look at his face and think he looks like a wet meowbeast. It was cool while it lasted.

He takes a deep breath before he steps over the threshold of the trap. “...... So what now? We go on with our lives as if this never happened? You keep me in your block like it’s a harem? You report me?” he looks utterly worn-out when the last word flits out of his mouth and falls to the floor, stale and flat and lifeless.

It takes a minute before you can properly respond. “I....... I don’t know.”

“You didn’t even think about it before waking me up?! I feel a metric fuck-ton of faith in your intellect right now.” 

“Oh shut up! I thought it out. I thought about it a lot! I just didn’t come up with anything...” your decibel level fluctuates from confident shouting to a mumble in the amazing space of two sentences. 

One of Karkat’s eyebrows rocket up so high it knocks a minor planet off of it’s orbit. “Thinking sure does a fat load of good if it doesn’t produce shit. Do you want an award?”

“I don’t have to put up with your nasty attitude if I don’t want to!” you jut one hip out for emphasis.

Karkat does the unexpected, he smiles. You get the feeling he likes arguing and you can’t help but admit, at least to yourself, that you also see the appeal. A cocky grin metastasizes from his face to yours. “Oh. Alright, Princess Asstrumpet, what’re you gonna do?” he says.

“Princess Asstrumpet?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re always talking out of your ass. I thought it was fitting.”

“Okay, that’s it.” you joke. “Dry yourself off and fight me, pisslord.” 

In response, he sits his wet ass down on your couch. “Nah.” he says.

“Gross! That’s where you’re sleeping, not me!” you purposefully brush over the whole ‘not letting Karkat go because you don’t have a plan yet’ thing. He takes it in stride.

“Since I’m apparently your prisoner by both social conventions and also fear for my fucking life, what are you gonna do about my sopping wet clothes, huh? Didn’t really think it through when you dropped me into the trap fully-clothed, did you?”

“What was I supposed to do? Would you have preferred it if I stripped you first?” you say, incredulous. Oh, wow. Now is not the time for that mental image. “And I did think about it before I did it. I weighed the options and this one didn’t affect me as much.”

The smug bastard rubs his butt into the couch at that. “Oh, it didn’t affect you? I guess you don’t mind if this couch gets wet, then.” He lays down fully. It’s gonna take a few nights before it fully dries.

“Ugh! You shit.” you exclaim. You stomp up to your wardrobifier and request a set of the threshie uniform. If he’s staying with you, he’s gonna need it. You hold them out and point to the ablution chamber doors. “In.”

He rolls the idea over in his mind. Taking the clothes out of your hand with a flourish, he holds his favorite finger up for your viewing pleasure and stalks into the chamber.

He is a prisoner and he accepts it. For now.

He’s in there for an awfully long time, or at least it feels like forever in comparison to the fast pace of before. You can hardly believe how fast that happened. There’s a possibility that he only gave in as easily as he did because he feared far worse and you can’t really deny that you let him off super easy.

Karkat comes out of the chamber, finally, swaggering like he pays rent to be here. He plops his fat butt down on the bed, knowing that the couch is wet. “So, Overlord Harley, I’ve got a question if your magnanimous self is willing to hear it.” he practically drawls.

“Princess Asstrumpet is willing to hear the feeble peasant boy’s question.”

He rolls his eyes. “How the fuck am I supposed to do my job if I’m too busy being shoved into your power fantasy?”

“It’s not a power fantasy! It’s a legitimate precaution.” you huff. He did raise a valid question, though. “How about I follow you there until I can trust you? It’s not like I have a schedule to follow and I guess I can do my job from anywhere, mostly.”

He follows through with a nice 2x facepalm combo. “Really? What do you think I’m gonna do? Conspire with my non-existent friends to kill you while you’re back is turned?!” 

“Well, yeah! I think that’s a normal fear since you tried to take me out once before.”

“Eurgh!” he lays down flat and stares up at the ceiling. “You’re not making any sense! If I was gonna kill you, you’d be in more danger when I’m in your fucking block than any place else.”

“At least that way I can regulate the weapons and sharp instruments you have on you when you’re in here.”

“Can’t be tamed. I already almost killed you with my bare hands.”

“Maybe I’ll give you sedatives when we go to sleep so I’ll wake up before you.”

“Sounds like an awful lot of unnecessary trouble.”

“Well my life is on the line! I don’t know much about you and I need to take all the precautions!” he stills a little. The air in the room goes flat and neither of you draw breaths any deeper than what a squeakbeast can live off of.

“Fine.” he says with teeth so gritted you could hardly tell what he’s saying if it weren’t for the definitive air it carries. He gets up and stops at the door. “You coming or am I giving a tour to a ghost?”

“I’m ready.” you grit out after taking your gun of the wall. It’s an open-carry facility, of course, and you’re taking it with you. Your real gun weighs a lot more than it had previously as you leave. Partially because it’s newly reloaded and partially because of the weight of another person’s life hanging onto the trigger and the decision of whether or not you pull it back.

He exits before you, the way you hold the gun to your side and the fact that he is a threshecutioner would make any onlooker think this was a normal occurrence, but you both know better; it’s a tentative funeral procession where neither party is quite sure if the casket will be necessary. 

“You’re lucky we’re not on Unjuin yet.” he says after a while.

“Huh? Why?”

“Well, until we arrive, we’re just training. You can watch all you want while we’re still training.”

There’s a restless, squirming silence. Karkat shuts his mouth for what is probably the first time since he’s hatched and you’re not quite sure what to say to ease it up. 

“How long have you been here?” you try.

“A couple nights. Maybe five.”

“Huh. I’ve been here a few less. Not really a notable difference.”

Another silence.

“What do you do here? Why exactly did you try to take my blood? All I know is it was an ‘experiment’.” he says.

“I’m a scienterrorist! And, well, I thought I could do a kind of blood weapon, you know, because they people of Unjuin all have the same blood-” you start expalining as you arrive at the entrance to the training grounds.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short fight scene. They will be better with practice and I sure will practice them with this fic.

CHAPTER 6

The first thing you notice once you enter the training grounds is the bright fuchsia banners. You knew there would be some amount of empire pride in here but you didn’t expect the eye cancer that’s been slathered liberally all over the walls. It overwhelms all of your senses and epitomizes distracting. With all of the sharp blades that this room has no doubt seen tossed around, that can’t be very practical. The next thing you notice is how few threshecutioners are even onboard. All of the movies on the homeworld had legions of threshies storming through cities and taking over planets without even sending in more troops, a first and final contact; but in here there’s hardly a whole flaysquad. Maybe there are more that just meet in a different training room? 

Some of the other threshies make obscene gestures behind Karkat’s back when you enter. The other’s do it to his face. However, their eyes devote most of their attention to you, accompanied with quirked eyebrows and aborted smiles of amusement. You don’t blame them. It’s not like he is the most likely to make friends in the first week. You’re not really his friend but you don’t stop anyone from jumping to that conclusion because you have no idea how you would otherwise explain your relation.

Karkat continues on with your conversation as if the other’s weren’t there. “What the mouth-foaming shit did you think was gonna happen when you just left the donation box there like an unloved orphan grub? Some dunderfuck was gonna see it and perform a bloodletting ceremony on the spot to appease the arcane god of science?” Though his words sound angry, his voice belies his playful attitude. 

“Sorry that some of us haven’t stooped to your level of unfaithfulness.” you throw back into his face.

“Odd word choice there. Unfaithful? Are you implying I’m a heathen who doesn’t believe in science or that I’m cheating on some asslicker that was stupid enough to date this wreck?”

“You don’t have faith in other people! I think I believe more in your flaysquad than you do and I haven’t even met them yet!” At that, several of the threshies snicker cruelly. Karkat gives you massive side-eye as if to say “Give it a day and you won’t even trust them with your middle name.”

He picks up a pair of hand weights from the middle of the rack. You can’t tell how heavy they are but they’re all color-coded; his are seafoam green. He leans against a bedazzled wall and starts on bicep curls, palms to the ceiling. Both of his upper arms look like he has oiled-up ferrets aggressively cuddling under his skin. You decide against telling him about that unflattering mental image. Instead, you slump down next to him and look up at the ceiling. Soft fuchsia with brighter fuchsia chandeliers. Classy. 

“So. After I set that out I just went back to my block and two kids dropped you off at my door like a sack of rotten potatoes and told me not to return you. You know what happened from there. I don’t think you much want me to tell that story in here....” The closest threshie nearby snaps back into her place as if she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Speaking of which, who were those herpes lumps that handed me over?”

“Uhhhmm, I never got their names but one was a boy and the other was a girl.” you flick your eyes over to meet his. He is not impressed.

“Go on.”

“Well, the boy was little and the girl used, like, five words max per sentence.” 

He chews at his lip, visibly turning this information over and over in his head. “Despite your frankly atrocious memory, I think I know who you’re talking about.” Considering how few people are present, this comes as no surprise. Not many options to mull through. 

“And? Is that a problem or a massive problem?”

“En-bee-dee.” you can’t believe he said nbd out loud, “I already knew they hated me. ‘Everyone hates you’ was probably the first thing I learned here.” he turns his head the other way, nonchalant.

“Ignoring the fact that you think you can abbreviate things out loud,” you roll your eyes, hard “That really doesn’t bother you?”

“Not really. They’re kinda little shits.” he doesn’t make eye contact with you and you’re pretty sure that’s a bad social habit. You decide to give him a hint that he shouldn’t do that by walking over to stand where he’s facing.

“Huh, really? I’d get too lonely too fast. I hate not being able to talk to my friends.” When he goes quiet, you decide to share something with him “My lusus was a trouble-maker. Just a normal barkbeast except he had a tendency to teleport and mess everything up. I ended up moving to a more remote place to avoid people giving me crap for my lusus. The island was pretty great aside from the isolation.” He gives you a concerned look and you hastily add “I could still talk to my friends, though. Computers exist.”

“Hm.” is his contribution.

“So... Where’d you come from? How long have you been here?” you ask.

“Came here only a couple perigees ago. Not too long. I’m from the suburbs in the middle of nowhere notable. All that really matters is that it was affordable and not on the bright side.”

“Oh.”

You continue on in mildly comfortable silence. Using this lull in conversation, you finally give yourself the time to better take in the place. The whole space is brightly lit and certainly doesn’t help the death-by-fuchsia motif it’s sporting, but it does help you see all the dazzling gems studded into every available surface. Chandeliers drip with dyed crystals, visibly weighed down and drooping with the effort of holding that much yolo swag in one place. Tragic. Below them, there must be less than a dozen people in this room aside from the two of you. Everyone in the flaysquad wears almost the same thing. Some wear smaller heels, sleeves, open toes or longer shorts but all of them bear the Empress’s symbol on the top left of their uniforms. All but two of them are still lifting weights and the rest have moved onto some complex leg stretches. You hope you get to see some combat training today. You’ll ask.

“Hey, Kat? You doing combat today?”

“Yeah.” he quirks an eyebrow, “Kat?”

“That’s your nickname. I decided it just now.”

“What if I say no?”

“Alrighty, then.” you smile slyly, “Kitkat rat-a-tat chocolate-covered grub fat.”

He doesn’t like that. Checking to make sure nobody heard you, he responds “Okay, no. I’m chill with most things that aren’t that. If you call me that one more time I will rip my own eyes out, put them on a shish kabob and use them as anal beads I swear to fuck.”

“... Alright, then. Go hard or go home.” Damn, you are definitely gonna file that piece of information away for later use. 

___________________________*****************______________________________

About an hour of bickering passes before any strifing happens. You have to wait until all the other threshies are done with their start-up routines before you can start the sparring. You sit on the ground in criss-cross-applesauce-style and watch as the other kids pick up their dulled sickles. The opponents are chosen for each person and threats are exchanged. The one that’ll be fighting Kat in the first round sneers and Kat shrugs, unimpressed.

The threshies wear no padding, just the protection of not using sharpened sickles. You’re sure that one of those could seriously injure someone anyway. Maybe it’s some kind of natural selection? If you aren’t on your toes, you probably shouldn’t be in the thresh corps in the first place. However, the floor actually is padded. The first two opponents step into the square of padding (more ceremony than anything) and a countdown begins. The last number hardly has a chance to hit your ears before the two are at each other. 

Now, you aren’t omniscient in the field of sickle fighting but they look good enough that you don’t want to ever face one in a back alley. It seems as if the faster they strike, the longer the fight becomes. Moves and countermoves, hooks and swings, awkward positions that look like an unfriendly game of Twister. You flinch in sympathetic pain as the taller girl is spun around on her left foot and knocked to the floor, her ankle crumpling beneath her. If that were you, your ankle would already be swelling to the size of a grapefruit. Someone calls the time.

“Four minutes and thirteen seconds!” a boy near the front shouts. Holy shit. They were fighting for four minutes? That never happens with guns.

Another fight passes and another belligerent falls to the floor like a marionette with snipped strings, folding in on herself. A time is called but you don’t even listen. Her face is twisted with pain and she bites her lip until it bleeds in order to stop herself from screaming. You feel a pang in your chest cavity like an irregular beat of your pumpbiscuit once you realize this is what these kids do everyday, that this is what Karkat does everyday. You’re not sure why you care about him at all to be honest. His name is called in conjunction with his opponent’s, Elenae. You plant the palms of your hands behind you and lean back as he approaches the padded square. Elenae tries another growl, not quite yet learning how ineffective of a scare tactic that is on him, and Kat responds with the indifferent grunt you knew he would give. Both draw their weapons.

You now understand why Kat hasn’t been outed as a mutant yet. He’s all defense and not a single hook grazes either him or his clothes. The other threshies turn to each other and start chatting, even the one taking the time. Apparently none of them expect this to be over soon.

And it wasn’t. Six minutes and twelve seconds later, the time is called and Elenae sits on her hind legs with his sickle around her neck, more exhausted than hurt. Karkat surprises you by not even looking at her, smug or otherwise, after he’s announced the winner. He comes to sit next to you, and you watch the next couple fights go by without a word until lunch.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stopped this chapter while it was still mega short because the next sense-making chapter break won't be for a while and I didn't want to wait that long and have a ~3,000 word chapter just slapped randomly in the middle. So enjoy this little blip in the mean time.

“So is this an animal or......?” you ask as you flip over a slab of (possibly) meat. It has a cinnamon smell and is remarkably easy to cut despite looking fully cooked. It isn’t bad at all, it’s just weird. “I didn’t have this on the island. What is it?”

“Really? Oh man, this shit’s the best. Super cheap, too. It’s partially meat but mostly grain and spices.” he starts rambling, “Had a friend who couldn’t eat meat real well and he made these with just what he could grow in his garden. Didn’t taste that great but still notable that he could make it. He gave me the recipe. Actually, I got a lot of recipes from him.”

“Oh?” you ask without listening to the answer. He can talk for a long time before he realizes you aren’t listening. His rambling voice is a hell of a lot more soothing than his ranting voice so you let it drone on in the background.

You don’t care for meat much either so you push it to the side of the plate. It’s too bad that it’s meat because it was just about the best thing on your tray. Maybe if you don’t think about it, it won’t taste as bad. You shovel the food into your mouth at an equilibrium of speed and lazy mindlessness. 

“-I absolutely hate that grain, way too gritty. But even if I adjust the recipe, it can’t lose most of it’s grittiness without sacrificing its signature flavor so I gave up on it. Didn’t want to waste my time on something that I knew I wouldn’t like. You know?”

“Uh-huh.” you say, not paying attention to him or the way your food flops around in your mouth. 

“Did you ever grow that where you lived? I heard it grows nice in tropical climates. I’m just assuming you lived on a tropical island?”

“Of course.”

“So you gardened on there? It would be a waste if you didn’t. All that open land and it must be so fertile in a warm and wet climate. What else did you grow?”

“Uh-huh.”

“....... Jaidye?”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“Jaidye. Jaidye, I hate you in the most platonic way.”

“Sorry. Wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

“I’d tell you if I was mistaken enough to think you’d listen.” Wow, somebody’s grumplestiltskin.

“Fine. Be passive aggressive all you want but- Oh! Hey, Larken.”

“Hey, Jaiyde.” Larken plops herself down next to you before asking, “Who is this? A threshie?” she bobs her head in the direction of the Empress’s symbol on his shirt.

Karkat stands up and reaches his hand across the table to shake her’s. Apparently he can be proper when he’s reminded of his status.

“I’m Threshecutioner Karkat Vantas, and you?” he says. Geez, what an awkward way to squeeze in your title.

“Scienterrorist Larken Sangot. I’m a new arrival to the bioweapons division and one of Jaidye’s partners.”

“Ah, I heard from Jaiyde here that you’re trying out a blood-based poison? Or is it a blood-targeting poison? I don’t remember.” he sits down and looks at you like it was your job to help him remember.

“Um,” you start, “We’re thinking of making it a blood-targeting poison. We need the blood for testing.”

“Why did you ask for the blood so early, then, if you aren’t using it until much later?”

“You can never start something like that too early. I don’t want to find out that we can’t test it because of insufficient resources the week before we arrive.” you throw back at him. He slouches over in a sign of defeat despite there being no backrest to support him. Checkmate, motherfucker. You turn your attention back to Larken.

Larken takes all of the attention you give her “So, how do you two know each other? Are you friends?” ‘Friends’ is tinged with disbelief. You don’t blame her. Kat’s an ass.

Karkat chips in “Friends? Usually.”

“Wait, what? What are we the other times?” you try to ask but Larken is having none of your private shit being aired out here. She clears her throat.

“Well, Sinomi and I scheduled a time for our next meeting. It’s tomorrow at 6:45 P.M.” she looks at Karkat. “Your friend is able to come as well, if he likes.” and with that, she leaves. You kind of feel bad that you made her uncomfortable.

“Sooooo, you’re coming.” you say to Kat.

“Kind of assumed.” he goes back to unenthusiastic munching.

“Oh, come on. It won’t be that bad.”

________________________************************************____________________

When you get back, it’s time to start weight training again. Karkat takes a darker green off the shelf this time and you follow him to the same wall you leaned against previously. He lays on the ground on his back and pushes his arms straight up into a military press. You don’t feel like wasting your time and decide that you may as well join in on the program. Curious, you ask how heavy the dark green one is. He says the weights get heavier as they darken, starting with white then yellow then orange and so on. Simple enough. You head on over to the weight shelf to pick up a the lone pair of whites. 

White weights aren’t as heavy as you thought they would be. You kind of wonder why they even have them, surely all threshecutioners are much stronger than this? You trade them back in for some light yellows and nearly drop them; the weight of these barbells seem to go up in intervals of hella. You consider, for a brief moment, putting them back before your pride stops you. You trudge back over to where Kat is laying like you are trying to run in water. Thank Empress that everyone is laying down or else they would probably stare. 

Once you get over to where Karkat is laying down, you plop onto your butt. No way do you trust yourself to not drop these on your neck if you laid down with him. You grunt and start doing lopsided bicep curls.

Kat smiles and whispers as best he can “Bit too much?”

“Nope. I’m good.”

“You sure? You don’t have to strain yourself, there’s no one to impress.”

“There’s me. I gotta prove it to myself. I gotta-” you’re having a hard time choking it out.

“You’re ridiculous and insecure.”

You cough indignantly, setting down your barbells so you can breathe before fiercely whispering “As if! You’re the one who finds it necessary to include your rank in casual conversation.” 

He has nothing to say to that.

_______________________*******************************_________________________

After a few more hours of training and dinner, you were all excused for the night. You fish out your keys and untangle them from your headphones before jamming them into your block’s door. Hive sweet hive. You weren’t even doing most of the exercises, you just started to feel worn out by watching them. You fling the door open and walk in. Kat drops heavily onto the couch before immediately standing up again.

“It’s still wet! Where am I supposed to stay if it’s wet?”

“Oh dear.” you say, sarcastic “I wonder who did that. Who could possibly be near-sighted enough to drench the couch they’re gonna sleep on?”

You reach into your closet and pull out a standard-issue blanket. “You want this?”

He takes it from you without a word and spreads it over the couch. Pulling the edges together, he wraps himself into a cocoon. You wait until he is done with all of his fidgeting and stretching before throwing another blanket on top of him. 

“Really? You give that to me now?”

“You didn’t ask.” you barely manage to say before breaking into a yawn.

“Well maybe I was expecting that you, being the host, would have offered me another blanket if you had one. I guess I just set my expectations too high. Hell, I didn’t even have expectations but you still managed to disappoint me in ev-” he starts. You cut him off by killing the lights.

“Sleep tight.” you say.

“Fuck you.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another chapter of seemingly unimportant stuff that will be incredibly important later. Y'all will just have to bear with me as always.

Light scourges the room immediately after you flicked it on, burrowing itself into Karkat’s makeshift cocoon. Kat nuzzles into the blankets further, obstinate. You sigh and stomp over to him, then wrestle his head out. He looks at you like you just co-signed his death sentence and you ignore his non-verbal plea for sleep.

“Wha’ do I needa be up for?” he mumbles.

“I’m going to the meeting soon and I thought you might want time to change before I drag you over my shoulder like you’re a dead cholerbear.”

“No way. It’s not that early. I’m gonna just...” he curls back up.

“I’m pretty sure we’re leaving in, like, fifteen minutes.”

“What time is it?” he calls out, ensconced in layers of blanket and laziness.

“You know, I’m actually not sure on the exact time it is anymore.” you throw him his phone from off the counter. “You check.”

He looks at his phone and groans loudly. “See? I told you, it’s too fucking early. No one is gonna be up at this hour in the dusk.”

“What time is it?” you ask again.

“Early.”

“‘Early’ isn’t a time, numbnuts.”

“I know, it’s an emotion and I’m feeling it.” regardless, he shrugs off his blanket and wanders over to the ablution chamber. “It’s only 6:12 and I’m gonna take my sweet time.”

You hear the water run, sit down, and pull out your phone.

________________________******************************________________________

To absolutely no one’s surprise, you’re both late. It would make you spitting mad if it weren’t for the sheer inevitability of the situation, there was simply no other option than to wait while he stylistically fucked up his hair. You still glowered the whole time.

“Hey.” you bark. You slap your bag onto the desk and Kat gracefully places himself right next to it. Sinomi’s eyebrows migrate a little higher than usual but she says nothing.   
“Hey!” Larken says, not noticing how pissed you are. “We were just about to start. Glad you could make it.” She looks happy to the point of smugness. 

“I’m also glad that I was so graciously allowed to come.” you spit at Kat, words bitter and dry on your tongue like pure cacao powder.

Larken chooses to ignore that. “Anyway, I just wanted to make it known that we can start the actual process now.” she pulls something out from her bag, a single vial, “I found someone who was willing to make continuous donations.” 

You would be delighted if you weren’t in such a shitty mood already. Instead, all you can focus on is how you let her get the upper hand. 

“Who is it?” Sinomi asks. You can see Kat perk up a bit as well.

“Well,” Larken falters, “I don’t really know. I don’t really think that’s weird either, I mean, if I was a rustblood I wouldn’t want anyone to know either.” you flinch a little at the term “rustblood” but otherwise her reasoning is sound.

“How do you know they’re a continuous donor then?” says Sinomi.

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe the fact that they’ve donated continuously.” Larken jabs her thumb at the box next to the mini thermal hull. “I have a couple more vials in the cooler. Thought it would make sense to only call y’all to a meeting once we have enough to work with.”

You hate how she’s making it sound like she did it all herself so you ask “You got these through the donation box we set up together, right?”

She sees what you’re doing and stops you with “Well, yeah. But I was the only one watching it. No one else even checked to see if there was anything in it this entire time.” Oh shit, she’s right. You were so busy with Karkat that you never checked the box. You let her have that one and stay in your lane.

“Soooooo, what’s the plan?” Sinomi breaks in.

You march on up to the board and pull the cap off of a marker. “If we’ve got such a steady supply, I suppose we can be a bit wasteful. Test out its limits. Who wants to see how maroonblood reacts with hydrogen peroxide?” 

_____________________********************************_________________________

Everyone but Karkat has blood stains up to their elbows and Larken has managed to get some in her hair. It’s only been an hour but already you’ve found out some useful (but mostly fun) properties of maroonblood. Turns out, most of the scientific process is “How can I make this explode without using anything expensive?” and you have so many wonderful branches to look into. You kind of feel like a kid at the science fair. 

Hissbeast venom can do wonderful things to all types of blood but this one is particularly fun, when it swishes around with the blood it turns into a thick, almost meaty, slab. You wave over to Kat in a “come over here and see what I just did” fashion but end up flinging a glob onto his lip. It looks like his soul is crying. Whatever, there are paper towels and he can find one if he needs one so bad. You continue motioning him over and he, to your surprise, comes over without much back talk after wiping the blood goop off his lip. 

“This is the coolest shit. Watch.” you say as you prepare another demonstration. You dip your hand in the cooler and realize there are only a few vials left. You pull one out regardless, can’t hurt that much, and put it in a cup. “When the hissbeast venom touches the blood, it gets all chunky.”

He doesn’t seem to like this trick that much.

“Cool. Awesome. Wow. Tell me, how are you gonna make this not a waste of time? How are you gonna get this in anyone’s bloodstream? Go around stabbing people with syringes?” he says.

“I dunno. Mist, maybe? Some kind of spritz?” you swish the mixture around some more “Lighten up a little. It’s not like you need to use every second of every night to maximum efficiency.”

__________________________***********************___________________________

It’s about an hour later when you finally start putting plans up on the board, and even longer when Kat almost literally drags you out of the lab.

“Isn’t it so fucking funny how you hated me for making you late to your meeting, but once I ask to be on time for my mandatory training then I’m still being the unreasonable one! You’re the queen of double standards and you don’t ever notice it.” he yaps.

“As though my meetings aren’t also completely mandatory. This is my job, Karkat!” you reply.

“Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t realize that you were on such a tight schedule when you spent almost the entire time convincing me that you weren’t on a schedule at all.”

“There’s a difference between needing to be there on time for my fucking job and needing to be serious as a case of bulgerot. Don’t you dare misquote me!”

You both all but forget what a proper decibel level even sounds like and if you were expected to abide by it by the time you arrive at the doors for the training grounds, screaming like tea kettles the entire way. The echo of his voice rings in your ears as loud as an alarm clock in the relative silence. You may not be yelling anymore but an argument still bubbles close to the surface under your skin as you stomp your way over to where you were yesternight. When he comes back with his weights he looks like he’s going to throw them at you. It’ll be a long night until he apologizes. Not you. You don’t ever apologize first because you aren’t really ever wrong. You’re not ever wrong but you are pretty patient; you’ll wait the whole night if you have to. You won’t even remind him that he’s wrong because you aren’t petty at all.


	9. Chapter 9

You are so petty. Your level of pettiness goes far beyond the point of humor and into the general area of deep shame. You still haven’t apologized to Karkat and kind of wonder if you even should at this point. You both argue a lot so maybe he doesn’t even remember it? He would totally laugh at you if you apologized now. He would laugh and call you petty. 

He calmed down a couple hours ago during the sparring, it must be some kind of stress relief for him, but you were still too mad to congratulate him on a job well done. You should probably do that now, alongside apologizing, but you think it’s a bit too late for that. 

Instead, you will be nice at the next possible opportunity. Maybe something like holding the door open or thanking him for holding the door open or telling him his hair still smells nice from washing it this morning even after hours of sweating to the point where he kind of looks like he did that one time you dropped him in an ablution trap. Now that you think about it, he’s really fucking sweaty. There’s no way he’s not dehydrated.

“Hey, you alright? You need to take a break or.....?” you ask.

“No.” he croaks out “Why?”

“You look like you’re dying. Dying and also drowning.”

“What?”

“You’ve sweat out half of the fluid in your body.”

He lowers his weights and sits up to look at himself. He seems a bit embarrassed. “Yeah. Um. Maybe I can take a break now.” he gets up walks to the exit. You try to beat him to it so you can be a good friend and hold it open for him but he seems like he’s in a big hurry to get to a drinking fountain so he beats you there and holds the door open for you instead. 

That wasn’t the plan. Plan B it is then. You try to thank him for it but your words come out sloshed at the last second and you say “I like the way you hold doors open.”

That wasn’t the plan either. You seem to have embarrassed him further because he blushes a little. “Uh. Thanks? And also you’re welcome?” he says. It’s very clear he isn’t used to expressions of gratitude, giving or taking. It’s all very awkward for the both of you.

You regain composure at least a little while he’s getting a drink. You ask him “Soooo, what do you think of that maroon who’s donating anonymously? Honestly, I would love to be able to say that I single-handedly provided for such an important project. Definitely want to slap my name on something like that.”

He takes a second to swallow before responding. “I guess. I’m a little confused at them trying to remain anonymous-blooded. Everybody will know sooner or later.”

“Really? You of all people would understand the benefits of being hemoanonymous.”

“Yeah. And I of all people understand what the possibility of pulling it off looks like. It isn’t a nice number.”

“Well, you’ve pulled it off alright so far.”

He stares at you. “Except you know.”

What a gross feeling that is. You used to relish having him in the palm of your hand but every once in a while you feel like you’re using him. You change topics. “Also, who the fuck can afford to hand out that much blood? They must be anemic now.”

“Huh. Gonna catch up to them. Kinda makes me wonder what they have to gain from doing this. People aren’t that generous, don’t just pass out their life juice like it’s tap water.”

“This may shock you, but sometimes people do good things because they are good people.”

“Good people don’t do good things to the point where they’re anemic.”

“I don’t need ‘good people’. I just need a single statistically outlying good person who goes above and beyond the necessity.”

“Sure. Whatever. It doesn’t matter who’s right until I get to say I told you so. This person is keeping their identity a secret and there’s a good reason why and that’s my final word on the matter.”

“Okay. My final word is that you are paranoid.”

__________________________**************************_________________________

Those really weren’t your final words on the matter. You talk about it all through lunch. Sinomi and Larken even join in on the discussion. Sinomi firmly sides with Kat and says that it’s “sketchy as hell” while Larken takes a side even more trusting than your’s. You think Larken may be so defensive because she was the one who took credit for the discovery. 

“I told you! I told you that threshies aren’t as generous as you thought. They don’t just give things and not expect a return.” Sinomi says. Kat looks vaguely offended when she doesn’t throw a “no offense” his way but he keeps his mouth shut because he knows it’s true.

You are stubborn. You know that threshies aren’t the glorious beings you thought they would be, you knew it the moment you stepped into the training room, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna give up on your relentlessly optimistic ways. “What could you get out of throwing your blood in a box? They say the ‘donation’ sign, they know that they aren’t getting anything back.”

“I bet not! I bet you anything we’re being set up.” Damn, Sinomi is vocal today. What the hell is her problem?

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Larken announces, “How about you gain a little faith in people and stop being such a sour bite in a small package?”

“Oh? Here’s another good one, how about you stop being so open-minded you have a hole through your brain? We. Are. Being. Set. Up. I bet so and that’s a standing invitation to prove me wrong.” Sinomi spits back.

“Okay. Fine. If you’re so sure of yourself,” Larken says, “Are you willing to bet your curly little horns?”

“What!?” you and Sinomi say at once.

“You heard me. If we get to Unjuin before an ulterior motive is revealed, I win. If some threshie tries to make profit off of his donations, you win. Loser gets their horns dulled.”

You don’t wanna look like Kat for the rest of your life. At least he’s gonna die young and won’t have to endure the teasing for a metric fuckton of sweeps. “Uh. No thanks. I’ll just watch.” you rush to get those words out there as if silence would automatically make you a contender.

Sinomi is as proud as you would imagine from a short person and doesn’t back down. “Prepare to feel sandpaper down to your skull. I’m in.”

You and Kat make a smart decision to eat elsewhere.


	10. Chapter 10

You instill a normal routine: You wake Karkat up, bicker, get dressed, bicker, wait while Kat fixes his eyebrows in the mirror, bicker only a little because he’s too focused to fight that much, eat breakfast, bicker, then go to training while you work on your laptop. The novelty of Karkat having a friend seems to have worn off with the other threshies because they hardly even notice you now. Their normal flow curves widely around the two of you as they get their weights and move about as if you’ve been contaminated by Kat and no longer are a viable option for conversation. You don’t mind. 

You’re laying on your belly and typing languidly into an email to Sinomi. You’d send the info to Larken as well but Sinomi responds faster and you’re sure she’ll tell Larken soon enough. Karkat has a bad habit of reading over your shoulder, he doesn’t try to be nosy but his eyes always wander your way. It’s not that big of a deal but he gets so defensive when you mention it that you’ve completely stopped. You feel his breath on the back of your neck, irregular from the strain of the weights. 

“I can’t wake up that early. Don’t tell her you can meet her at 6 if we fucking can’t.” he protests, all too loud for the close proximity.

“No, I certainly don’t have any problems waking up that early. You do.”

“Is me having a problem not a problem?”

“Nope. If you’d let me finish the email,” at that, he opens his mouth, getting defensive already “You’d know that I was planning on holding it in our room so you can sleep in. I’m nice like that.”

He closes his mouth, stares, and opens it again. “... So you want your friends to stare at me, in my sleep no less, like a zoo animal.” He thinks for a moment and drops his voice to as close to a whisper as he can really get “No, more like your prisoner. I mean, that’s what I am. You just treat me nice but you could try to kill me again at any time, isn’t that true?”

The latter half of what he said was the very height of uncomfortable, so you choose to not address it. “Holy fuck. Fine. We’ll meet up in the lab at 7. You know, there are nicer ways of saying that you don’t wanna wake up at a reasonable time.”

He doesn’t even thank you; in fact, he seems madder than ever. He drops his weights and walks out the door. You follow a good distance behind and out of the blast zone. He’s only getting a drink but he leans over the fountain for a moment afterwards, hands gripping the sides, and takes a few deep breaths. His face contorts with hot anger but goes tepid once he turns to look at you. You stand behind him and watch his back when he pushes through the doors to the training grounds.

He doesn’t speak very much until lunch.

________________________********************************_______________________

By the time lunch rolls around, you’re getting kinda antsy. He’s staring straight into your eyes but not saying anything. Why isn’t he saying anything? It’s not like you can avoid his gaze by putting your laptop in between you two either because you’re holding a sandwich, so you just stare at your plate. You know he’s still looking at you, you can feel it. 

“Okay, what the fuck?” you finally ask.

He raises his eyebrows as if that’s a proper response.

“What’s up with your passive-aggressive bullshit? I don’t know what you want from me and I’m not gonna take punishment where it isn’t deserved!”

“........ You still haven’t answered my question. I think it’s an important question. You answer my question, and I’ll know how I should talk to you.”

“Do you think I remember a question you asked hours ago?” You think he’s over-reacting but like hell you’re gonna tell him that.

“I’ll repeat it, then. You just treat me nice but you could try to kill me again at any time, isn’t that true?”

“Yeah, I guess? I could conceivably do just about anything I wanted, couldn’t I?”

That must have been the wrong response because his face falls instantly. You thought his mad face was the worst but now you’d trade anything for it back; he looks hopeless.

“What. What do you want me to say?! It’s the truth; I could technically kill you right now. You could kill me right now. That doesn’t-” you try.

“How dare you?! I wouldn’t kill you. I was, however, an idiot for thinking the desire to not murder each other was mutual.”

“I never said-”

“You just said you could kill me! Don’t play games with me.” He almost yells. Some people are staring.

You drop your voice to a sharp whisper. “I said I could. I never said I would. I couldn’t kill you in good conscience but it is, in fact, physically possible for me.”

That answer seems to satisfy him but there is, as per usual, still some residual anger after such an outburst. He lets out a long sigh, his anger riding on the air released. Simmering down, you let the silence pass. It’s much more tolerable this time around.

It’s amazing just how much trust goes into a confession of non-murderous intent.

_______________________*********************************________________________

“You know, I thought I had romantic troubles until I met him.” he injects into his story, “But that guy shot it all out of the water.”

“You can always be less fortunate, I think.” you tell him.

“Oh, but it gets worse. So he goes to get his ex-kismesis back from his ex-moirail by any means possible, you know? Even if it’s just for the honor of it. You don’t want people to know that your moirail gave so few shits about you that they became matesprits with someone who hates you. That’d be almost as bad as vacillating diagonally yourself. But when he goes to see her, his moirail is the one who opens the door to his kismesis’s hive. The moirail, she’s a mess. Blood streaking down her face and clothing ripped. That’s not how you wanna see your moirail, ya know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So he asks her why she’s so ripped up, ‘cause he still cares about her and all, and she says she’s been vacillating. The problem, though, is that that’s not the same story the kismesis told. Turns out, his old caliginous babe had been beating the shit out of his old pale partner. So he goes in and blows her head off.” He pauses for a clarification, “The kismesis, not the moirail.”

“Oh my hell.”

“Yeah.......” he puts one hand in front of the other, palms flat, in a crawling motion; no small feat when you’re doing the splits. 

“I used to have three quadrantmates but I had to leave them when I joined the fleet. I guess that’s better than killing one of them, though.” you say.

“True... I had a moirail. Well, I had a guy that I talked shit with but we never went totally official. He was a violetblood, probably a fleet leader now, so I’m not really expecting to see him in eye-arr-ell. Never did. Safer to date online because then they never find out what blood color you are until you want them to know, you know?”

“Hmm.” you buzz thoughtfully, “I mainly dated online because I lived on an island.” 

“Well, yeah. No real choice for you unless you wanted to spend a fortune on plane tickets.” There’s a silence before he continues “Always hated planes. Full of asshole attendants.”

“They’re just trying to help you.”

“They don’t care about anyone.”

You roll your eyes so hard they spin another rotation from the force of the first. “Pfft. You’re irrational.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies are probably necessary for this chapter but you aren't getting any.

It’s 7:06. It’s 7:06 and he’s still in there. You needed to leave at ten til seven and you’re still here, sitting on your sofa, at 7:06. You’re frustrated to say the least, but not as bad as the hissy fit Kat has been throwing in the bathroom for the last half hour. 

“You know, I just *love* the way that eyeliner refuses to be erased. I’m horns over heels *infatuated* with the way that smudged eyeliner looks like tire marks. It’s like, you know what would complete this outfit? If it looked like someone literally ran over my face.” he pauses to breathe and calms down just a little “All that this makeup remover is actually removing is the top layer of skin around my ganderbulbs. It’s all gone. Forget winged eyeliner, I’ll be lucky if I don’t look like Troll Freddy Krueger. Say goodbye to the good ol’ nights when I had enough muscle tissue around my seeing orbs to roll them at the pisslords I surround myself with. Wait, scratch that. I just want enough to be able to close my raw eyelids when people stare at my flayed visage in abject horror, to be able to shield myself from the criticism I rightly deserve. I brought this upon myself, Jaiyde, I’ve- I’ve done it!” 

“Done what, exactly?”

He rushes out of the bathroom and shoves his face in your’s. “Left eye, completed. Status: rekt.”

“Finally. Thank fuck. Let’s go, now?”

“No ‘oh that looks fantastic, good job Kat’, just ‘get your useless ass in gear, we’re going’? You’re so mean to me.”

“I know right, I’m such a tyrant for wanting to be within the acceptable parameters of lateness. Just call me Caligula.”

“....... Wasn’t Caligula the guy that waged war against that ocean god and made his hoofbeast a senator?”

“Yep. Aren’t you lucky? Maybe if you shut your dumb mouth you could rise to that high position yourself amongst our lab group.”

“Being a senator or your hoofbeast?”

“I don’t know. I let that metaphor get away from me.”

“........ Wasn’t he also, like, this massive sexual deviant?” he steals a scandalized look at you as if by saying it he somehow made it true.

“Kat?”

“Yeah?”

“We all make mistakes and I suggest you drop this one.”

______________________********************************_________________________

You get there at 7:13. No one is surprised to see that you’re late and to be honest you’re a little insulted over that. Your lab mates should hold higher standards for you but you suppose it can’t be helped as of right now. Karkat drapes himself over a seat and says nothing by way of greeting to the others besides a nod of acknowledgement. His body language says casual despite the tension in the room. Larken fiddles with the cap on the whiteboard marker and Sinomi has her jaw locked tight. You have a feeling that this unease was not created by the two of you being late. 

“So, how are we all doing today?” Larken says. Her words travelled up the pitch spectrum as the sentence went on. That kind of throat tightening can’t be good for her.

“Decent.” Kat says before looking at you for confirmation, “Right, Jaidye?”

“Yeah..... What’s on the agenda today?” you say.

Sinomi gives the biggest eyeroll but says nothing. Larken rolls her feet from the balls of her heel to her toes as if she’s been shuffling around for quite some time and is starting to get tired. “Well... You see... I ran a test yesterday over the blood we had, in order to find out who the mystery donor was and all, and everything checked out perfectly until.... well.....” Larken trails off.

“Until what? What went wrong!?” you’re starting to get antsy. 

Sinomi glares at Larken until it becomes apparent that her throat is too constricted to continue that sentence. Sinomi swings her gaze back to you and continues where Larken left off, “I had the idea to check the vials. Make sure none of them are contaminated. All of the vials in the first cooler checked out but I was all ‘Why don’t we try the others in case the donor used the same needle as the first donation or something else a wiggler could pick out as unsanitary?’ So we checked out the other cooler and the blood was the same color, obviously, but it. Uh. It wasn’t the same blood type.”

“They didn’t match?” you ask.

“They didn’t match.” Sinomi shifts her weight on her feet uncomfortably as well. “One was AB and the other was A negative. We tried multiple times to make sure we weren’t making a mistake in determining it. We didn’t.”

“.... I don’t get it. What’s the problem? Isn’t having multiple donors a good thing?”

“Well, usually. At first we thought ‘Hey, we were wrong about the one person donating thing, big fucking deal’, but when we talked to some of Larken’s friends who were doing a similar project. They said they also had generous donations. We pulled in a couple vials and whaddya know? They matched our different blood types.” Sinomi turns to face Larken who looks truly pathetic at this moment, sulking and biting her unnecessarily long-ass nails, before turning back to you two. “We asked them when they received those donations. Turns out, they got the donations on the same days as we got ours. Kinda suspicious, right? Then we asked how much.”

“Oh fuck. Please don’t continue. I get the point.”

“I bet you can guess the answer, then. Waaay more than any lowblood can give in one go.”

Kat stifles a laugh, badly. “So you mean you just got involved in a serial killer case?” he looks at Larken, “You're gonna be saddled with a sad-ass pair of horns, kid.”

And then the room explodes with sound as you all talk at once.

______________________********************************__________________________

Nothing is settled during the ensuing discussion but you know what to do. You drag Kat out in the middle of an ‘I’m more cynical than you’ yelling match with Sinomi and shout a name out into the halls. You absolutely must find Johenn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you just love how there's murder in this ship fic before there's any romance? Yeah, whoops.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. I'd give a reason for it but tbh I have no idea myself.

How could this many people disappear without anyone noticing? Who on this ship could possibly be whisked away and never seen again and none would be the wiser? Who is always there but never makes any lasting or memorable contact with enough people that someone would get curious if they were gone? That had a simple answer and you knew it before you even finished the thought.

The faculty.

Shit. 

You aren’t perfect. Even you forget the faces of the janiterrorists that take out the trash and serve you lunch and clean the bathrooms. Whoever asked for your laundry this morning could be dead by this afternoon and even you wouldn’t know. 

You console yourself with the idea that, maybe, Johenn has been here long enough to make friends with someone more attentive than you. He’s certainly outgoing enough.

“Are we gonna go to breakfast or......?” Kat whines behind you.

“What? Why would we do that?” 

“Well, you’re running towards the cafeteria so sue a guy for assuming that going to the cafeteria at the time you eat breakfast when we haven’t eaten breakfast yet means that we are, you know, eating breakfast.”

“Oh.” you take a moment to assess the fact that you are now at the door of the cafeteria. Karkat follows close behind and puts a hand on the door, right next to your shoulder, and stares at you.

“So what exactly are we doing down here? Also, who is Johenn? Also, why are you getting so worked up about someone helping you? Sure, it’s murder but, like-” Kat is cut off abruptly by the door opening and running over his foot.

“Johenn!” you all but yell in relief. You ignore the sound of Kat cussing out Johenn, Johenn’s lusus, his own lusus, and....... yep, the inevitable swear session crafted just for you.

“Yeah. Hey, Jaidye. How’s it going?” he seems distracted by Kat’s death threats. Huh.

“It’s going good. Just wondering if you’ve seen any corpses recently.” After giving it some thought, you add “I was also concerned that you may have been a corpse yourself but I see that that’s not the case. Congrats.” 

“Thanks for noticing.”

“You’re welcome!” you give him a smile. “I suppose that means you haven’t seen any dead people recently, then?” 

“No.” He looks uneasy when he asks “Are you looking for anybody in particular? I could help you find them.”

“That’s nice, but no. Just faculty in general. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure it’s faculty. I don’t know.” You suddenly feel very silly. You really jumped to conclusions there. You don’t know if someone is killing faculty and giving you the blood of the maroons or if someone is only killing maroon faculty or maybe even just non-faculty maroons. You don’t know anything.

Kat may be glaring at Johenn, but you still feel like he’s staring holes into your head when he says it’s time to go. Johenn promises that he’ll tell you if he’s a witness to any murders and you feel stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course he will. Of course he’s fine. He’s not even maroon. Of course, of course, of course. 

You head into the cafeteria with your tail between your legs.

___________________________*********************____________________________

“Ugh. I just wanted to be careful and I thought I had a lead.” You eye a hunk of salad on the end of your fork before deciding that leaves are not food for people who love themselves. You put the leaves down. 

“.......”

“I know.”

“I didn’t say anything?”

“I could feel it.” you sigh. “Next time, I’ll let you in on the plan before I run down the halls screaming.”

“That’d be nice.” he rips off a chunk of pancake with his hands like an asshole. He looks deep in thought. “But I can’t really blame you.”

“Huh? Why?”

“You were just trying to make sure your friend was safe. I can’t blame you. I’d do the same.”

“Oh, thanks. Yeah. It’s just he’s my only friend so I gotta-”

“You bitch!” he crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“What?”

“There I was, saying that I would care about you if you were in danger and then you go and exclude me from your friend group. What the shit?”

“Wow. It’s almost as though ‘I don’t want you dead’ isn’t exactly the same as ‘I wanna be your friend’.”

“No need to be an ass. Do I have to say ‘I want to be your friend’ for you to get that or can I just mail you an invitation?”

“I’m not sure if I could accept an invitation from someone who eats pancakes with their bare hands.”

“Oh yeah? I’m not sure if I can be friends with someone who flicks blood onto my mouth. Have you considered that? Maybe your carefree bloodflinging has consequences.” he smirks. You can’t suppress a grin as well when you deliver a friendly (but certainly not light) smack to his shoulder. 

__________________________***********************____________________________

The rest of the night is spent as normal. At least, it would appear normal to anyone who isn’t you. Neither of your friends are in any immediate danger (you think) but you still feel panicked. You continue work as usual; you gather documents and revise blueprints and are otherwise very productive, but a worm of stress sits heavy in your stomach, gnawing at your skin and tangling with your doubts. What if other blood castes are being killed and you only know of the maroons because you’re getting their blood? What if they come after Kat? He’s certainly not safe and you’re not in a real hurry to lose someone you just became friends with.

But what can you do about it?

You can lock your doors but you doubt those poor maroons didn’t lock theirs as well. What kind of serial killer doesn’t know how to lockpick? You could take sleeping shifts but Kat hardly survives waking up with 9 whole hours as it is. You don’t wanna see him sleep-deprived. Wait. You could rig one of your guns to-

“You alright?” Kat interrupts your inner monologue. “You look stressed out.”

“Yeah. I just- ..... Yeah.” 

“I have a hard time believing that. Most “totally chill” people don’t have keyboard indents on their foreheads.”

Oh. It appears as though you spaced out and slammed your head into your husktop. So much for productivity. “I never said I was “totally chill”, I just said I was alright. You can’t quote me on something I never said.”

“What was that? I have the best ass here? For once in your misguided life, you are absolutely right.”

“Okay. Now I definitely didn’t say that.” It’s truly amazing just how quickly blood can gush into your cheeks. 

“Hmm? I get the ‘coon when we go to sleep? You are just so generous.”

“Stop it!”

“Just tryna get your mind off of whatever’s troubling you.”

“Oh....... I appreciate the effort, but it’s kind of a big thing. Murder, ya know?”

“Alright. New topic. You name it.”

“Augghh.” you press the hands of your heels into your forehead, thinking. “Weather?”

“We’re in space, Jaiyde.”

“Well, umm, did you play any sports in your lawnring growing up?”

He’s momentarily taken aback before saying, “Yeah. We, uh, we had a sport.”

“A sport?” you show him a raised eyebrow. “One sport?”

“Yeah. Sometimes it was called “the sport” because we only knew how to play one.” he leans back, casual. “But usually we would call it by its name. It was called ‘kick each other in the mouth’ which I always thought was a great name.”

“Oh?”

“Because it wasn’t just the name. It was the name, the objective, the gameplay, and the rules.”

“Oh.”

You try to grab that train of thought by the horns and reign it in, but it’s too late. Complete verbal derailment. 

“I always won. That’s kind of a given because otherwise I’d be dead. My fervor for winning this game was driven in part by a need to keep my blood a secret, but also in part to simply beat the shit out of the kids in my lawnring. One time, this kid was givin’ me serious grief. I’d rank him somewhere between a piece of spittle that lands in your eye when someone you’re talking to gets too heated, and a walking abortion. He had thrown a rock into one of the windows of my hive with a message inviting me to join the game, and that was all well and good, but it was still a fucking rock and it was still fucking thrown into my house. Even then, I’d be able to find my chill if it didn’t smash the living death out of my hermit crab terrarium, rest in peace Will and Sandler, and send chunks of crab flying onto my lusus’s respitecouch. Did I tell you my lusus was a crab? Like, literally? Well, anyway, you know now. And so when I go to play the sport, I get a little antsy to do some damage to this kid’s skull. I know who it is because this stupid shit thinks he’s immortal so he writes his name on the note. I know, I know. He’s a blister on the ass of trollkind. So when I finally get him cornered, I take out the same rock he threw in my window and he’s all “but the rules say that you can only kick each other in the mouth”. And then I laugh and grab him by the horns and-”

“WOW! You are sooo great at getting my mind off murder! Thanks, Kat.” 

He blinks and lowers his head, looking at his lap. “Sorry. Kind of got out of hand.”

“Kind of?” you try a smile. “Oh well, at least you didn’t spit in my eye.” 

He doesn’t lift up his head, but you can see a faint smile on his face even from that angle as it is.

___________________________**********************___________________________

Not too far away, a set of five beautifully manicured claws gently, lovingly, lowers a vial into a box. The body attached to the claws slips away, arrival unannounced and departure unnoticed. This particular body has business elsewhere. More vials jingle merrily, ominously, in a briefcase of their own.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this at Mormon Camp because I needed some more sin in my diet

You jolt awake, you blood thumping thick in your ears. Someone is trying to bludgeon your door open. Is it the killer? Do they know that you’re on their case? Your blood crashes in your ears and constricts your heart as you dare a thought. Are they here for Karkat? 

You hurdle over the edge of your recuperacoon like you’re a star in the fucking Olympics. Your bathrobe isn’t even fully on before smack Karkat awake.

“Kat? Kat, get up.” you whisper.

“Hnnnn?”

“Kat, there’s someone at the door.”

He gives you the dirtiest look before before he rolls to his other side and mutters, “Get it yourself. You’re already up.”

“No. Nobody’s getting the door. That’s the whole point. Are you not hearing this?” you whisper, incredulous.

He glares before getting up and making his way to the door. “Don’t be fucking rude.”

You can’t believe him. He’s opening the door. You cross the distance in a single leap and slam the heel of your palm against the door. 

“What are you doing?” he looks at you like you just grew two heads and spit piss on the floor.

“What am *I* doing? What are you doing?!”

“Answering the door because I wasn’t raised on an island by myself my whole life so I actually have some damn manners.” he says. You don’t have enough time to do anything besides gape at him before he opens your block’s door to the murderer.

Except..... it’s not.

“Finally. I feel like I’ve been knocking for forever.” says a certain Larken Sangot.

“Oh.” you deadpan.

“Yeah. ‘Oh’ would be right.” Kat gives you a look. 

“Maybe I need to.... unwind?” 

“I would say so.” Karkat turns back to Larken, “So, what are you here for?”

Larken stretches out her hand and unfurls her fingers to reveal a smudgeless glass vial that holds maroon that makes your throat clench. The vial is ambivalent. It’s actually a very pretty sight, the maroon streaking down the inside of the glass creates a striking image, but it’s still disgusting as you know what the price for it was. It’s ominous and dazzling in the same way as cholerbear teeth.

She says “Another.”

________________________***********************_____________________________

You’re back at the lab and your optimism had fled the ship long before you got the results back. As expected, it does not match any of the previous samples. Larken is calling up the other blood research groups to see if they’ve received any new donations and you’re working furiously with a microscope to see if you can’t identify who the blood came from. Sex chromosomes in all trolls are the same, so you push those out of the way first. You really just can’t learn anything important about a person based on their gametes. However, that hardly stops you from figuring out what they looked like anyway. The genes are so well-preserved that the work almost does itself. You’re jotting down alleles at a pretty decent pace, now, a getting a vague idea of what the victim must have looked like. Johenn had said that there was only a handful of faculty, so he may be able to identify the finished result. 

Kat’s down at your respiteblock getting ready. At least, you hope he is. He may have gone back to sleep. Your work tonight just couldn’t wait for his obsessive behavior to decide he was ready, so you let him stay behind for a bit. Besides, it’s not like you don’t trust him to get down here eventually. It’s been a few perigees and him staying with you is less of a precaution and more of a habit. It’s like having a sleepover with your bestie every day. You like Johenn and Larken and Sinomi plenty, talk to them everynight even, but Karkat has a special place in your bloodpusher. To be specific, that special place is the throne. You tried to not give in too fast, but there’s just so much to appreciate. The way his hair still smells great even after working out, how you can rest your arm on the top of his head without him complaining too much, the face that he makes when he tries to restrain himself from appearing too excited but you totally know better. Hell, you’ve even found happiness in how he drowsily repeats whatever you said to him under his breath before he answers when he’s really tired. He’s not hard to like once you get to know him.

Speak of the devil; here he is. He barely has the courtesy to step through the threshold before looking pissy and ready to leave. He’s doing the impatient leg wiggle thing before his time in the room passes the 15 second mark. You ignore it. 

“Hey, Sinomi!” you call out, “Come over here and bring a pencil.” While your art skills are limited to bored doodling, you’ve recently learned that Sinomi is none too shabby when it comes to portrait sketches. You learned this when she drew a not-too-nice caricature of Karkat and posted it on the wall. Looking between the real Kat and drawing Kat, you realize that the drawing’s butt was probably supposed to be comically plush but actually isn’t too far off from the real thing.

“Do you think you could draw a mugshot based off of these traits?” you ask while handing her the allele sheet. 

She doesn’t even look at the paper before quirking an eyebrow. “For free? No. You want a drawing, then commission me.”

“C’mon Sinomi, we’re friends, right?”

“Listen, bud. I don’t usually even have the time to draw shit for myself. You aren’t that special.”

You point to the drawing on the wall. “Hmmm?”

Sinomi starts doing her characteristically wild gestures. “Oh yes, how dare I do something for fun for myself every blue moon when I have the time?”

“Okay, okay. I get it. But it wouldn’t be for free.”

“Oh?”

“Well, yeah. It’s kind of part of your job.”

“Oh, silly me! I forgot the part in my job description that said I had to help you catch a serial killer.”

“. . .” She’s got you there. You sigh, “How much for a full-color bust?”

____________________________*****************______________________________

Harelip, square jaw, almond eyes spaced far apart. Even if you don’t agree with a little of Sinomi’s artistic interpretation, that alone should be enough to recognize whoever it is. When you show the description to Johenn, he struggles for a moment before his eyes light up.

“Oh! I know that guy. He’s new here but he’s pretty great. Was talking to him just the other night. He works in a different wing so I don’t see him often, though. Why do you ask?”

“He’s dead.” says Sinomi.

“Sinomi!” you scold.

“Yeah, Sinomi. I wanted to break the news. I told you that.” Kat adds rather unhelpfully.

“Whoa whoa whoa. He’s dead? How would you know?” says Johenn.

“We found his blood in a box.” you say.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t freak out, it’s okay. We asked for it.”

“You.... You-” he holds his head, “Why?!”

“For science.”

“Okay. Nevermind. I don’t want to know. Just... Just tell me who I need to watch out for.”

“I’m not entirely certain. But we do know, now, that being a member of the faculty factors into this somehow. So just watch out for people who are rude towards faculty, I guess? You already do that, don’t you? Uh. I dunno. I‘ll get back to you on that.” 

_______________________****************************__________________________

“No match, no match,.... match?” you turn it over in your hands. “Wait, no. No match.” You fling them onto the lid of your ‘coon in frustration. 

“I bet I could find matches for at least a few of them if you’d let me.” Kat says.

“You hand him all of your unmatched socks and scoot out of the way. “All your’s, bud.”

“You sure? Are you really sure that I’m allowed into your sock drawer? That’s kind of.....”

“Oh my hell. I- I would absolutely not keep that kind of stuff within your reach. And, hypothetically, if I did, I would *not* give you the go-ahead to sift through it. What the hell?” You are Jaidye Harley and you are sooo easy to fluster.

“Okay. Well then, where would you “hypothetically” put it? Everything you own is within my reach. I *live* here.”

“Why would I tell you? I don’t want you getting into my shit. Get your own!”

“Oh my- Oh, fuck no! Why would I *ever* want to use your shit! Don’t flatter yourself. That’s so gross. Besides, I’ve got my own shit back at my block. Don’t make me gag.”

“Oh, great. Now I know what you do when you go back to your block to “get something”. Thanks ever so much.”

“Well now I know that you keep some in the block that I sleep in and use them when I’m gone. Ugh. Nevermind. We are no longer on this subject. Never again.” he scoots forward and starts looking through your drawer for matching socks.

__________________________************************___________________________

“Nnnnnng.” you grit out. You simply can’t hold this position for much longer. Your elbows are killing you and a shudder rocks your entire frame, vertebrae by vertebrae, when the pressure shifts on your back. “Can you stop shifting it so much, Karkat? You’re making this really difficult.”

“Sorry. It just looked like you were having a hard time so I moved the weights around a little. No point in doing weighted planks if you break your central bone column. You looked pathetic so I had mercy.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need your pity sooo....” you flash a smile at him but he looks away. Such bad manners. You’ll teach him better eventually.

“Yeah, sure. Good to know.” he says before facing you again and asking, “You want to be done now? You’re probably wrecking your back.”

“Nice to see you care, but no. I’ll be done once the exercise is over and not a moment sooner. You did it the whole way and so will I. I’m gonna get swole. We can be swolemates.” you laugh at your own joke and he cracks a smile as well.

“Well, you see, I did the whole thing because I’m a threshecutioner and it’s kind of my job.”

“Yeah, but you’re also a pansy. Get me heavier weights, the ones 3 shades lower than your’s, I can take it.”

__________________________********************______________________________

“What would happen if we just, I dunno, stopped accepting donations?” Kat asks.

“What would happen? Well, for starters, we would stop knowing when someone was killed. I would also fail my project.”

“Oh yeah. I kind of forgot about that. When’s that due?”

“You forgot? There are blueprints on the mealblock plateau in front of you. I was just talking about them; thanks for listening.” you gesture to the blueprints with your moobeast sandwich. You’ve started using your block’s coffee table and eating here instead of the cafeteria more now that you have someone to pass the time with. “As for the due date, I think I have it on the lab’s calendar. I’ll check when we go back.”

“You don’t have it memorized? For shame, Jaidye, for shame.”

“Sorry, I’ve been distracted.” you both lapse into comfortable silence as you continue eating. It’s rare, him being quiet.

He, to the surprise of neither of you, breaks the silence first with “What’s next, then?”

“With the murder thing? I don’t know. Process of elimination? I think we should start with figuring out how far the danger zone stretches, ya know? Who’s a likely target and all that.”

Karkat just nods in response. You like that. It just feels so...... domestic? You could really get used to that feeling.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the unexplained hiatus, y'all. I was thinking about abandoning this fic but then I had my mind changed by a comment. So, yeah, comments are really cool and I love reading them. If you left a comment on this fic, you are pretty great. Hope you enjoy.

You haven’t seen Johenn in a while.

Normally, you’d be a bit more worried about this, but you know it’s just because he’s been busy. The last time you saw him, he’d told you that it “seems like if I don’t do something, it never gets done” and that it feels like no one is there to pick up the slack. He’s working the long hours now. He’s busy. You both are.

At least when you get work done, it stays done. You have a lovely little prototype for your poison that works on almost all types of maroon blood. O- is being a little bitch but you’re sure you can straighten that out. After you fix O-, then you can work on how to administer the poison. All you have right now is that it looks like it’ll be airborne but, as you said, you’ll get there when you get there. 

You, Sinomi, and Larken (and Karkat a little bit, too) have been working tirelessly for perigees on this poison. What it’ll do is turn blood into sludge, the poor Unjuins’ hearts will be too overworked and will collapse. You are so pumped. It’ll be such an honor to slap your name on the final product. You almost feel bad that Mitoba has missed this opportunity but, really, they brought it upon themself. You do wonder what happened with them.

Idly, you pull out your phone and check for the last time you messaged Mitoba. And it looks like it was.......three perigees ago. 12 messages to them in total, all read, none answered. You wonder why they left their number on the board if they weren’t wanting to be contacted. But really, it’s none of your business. 

You go to take a sip of fancy highblood tea when the whole food hall lurches. A girl walking to her table slips and skids on the floor, her food spraying everywhere. The ship is stopped. This has happened an awful lot recently. It feels like the ship stops for supply runs at every opportunity. Most of the new “supplies” are crew members, usually male and not very bulky. You wonder what they are, certainly not threshecutioners. Maybe janiterrorists? You’ve tried to keep an eye on all of the faculty but everynight the people who serve you lunch are different from the people who serve you breakfast and the people who serve you breakfast one night are replaced the next week. It’s all very difficult and confusing. Maybe that’s why Johenn has to work so hard? Maybe all the faculty are getting switched out because they don’t do their jobs right. 

(You know that’s unlikely, but you won’t say it to yourself.)

Your food is mostly unharmed. Some tea spilled on your lap but it isn’t too hot so you just dab it up with a napkin. You don’t even have to look to know that Karkat dropped his gooey mashed..... something (it looks like a vegetable but you don’t know what vegetable comes in that color) on his shirt. 

“You know, if this is going to happen on a regular basis, couldn’t they schedule it out or something? Maybe bring it up on the intercom? Maybe an email? Something other than a ‘good luck’ and a wink? How am I supposed to live like this? I’m in a constant state of fear and apprehension. Like, maybe the ship will just fall out of the fucking sky one time? Check me out in the near future, refusing to drink anything that doesn’t come in a sippy cup for pants-shitting wigglers.” rants Karkat.

“Chill out. I’m the one who spilled their drink; your sippy-cupless future is secured.” you say.

“Yep. Everybody knows that everything that isn’t a drink doesn’t spill. Mashed ground tubers? Doesn’t spill. Paint? Stiff as a board. Expired udder secretions? Can’t come anywhere near you. In fact, it forms a hydrophobic forcefield around you and-”

“I’ll say it again. Chill out. We can get you a new uniform back at the block.”

Sinomi looks down at her food intently. She’s so weird about you and Kat sharing a block. You know everyone thinks that you two are together (flushed) but you really aren’t. You wouldn’t really mind if you were in some quadrant (flushed), any quadrant at all (flushed flushed flushed), but you are perfectly content being his friend instead. You think he is too. 

You’re pretty much done with your food so you get up to leave. You don’t really have to set the times for when you’ll see your teammates in the lab anymore, it’s all pretty routine, but you tell them anyway. Karkat stands up with his tray as well and waves his hand once, nonchalant, as a way of saying bye. 

______________________***************************____________________________

Karkat’s in the ablution chamber and you hear the water going. He said he was just gonna change but obviously that’s not the case. You sit on the bed, lean against the wall, and decaptchalogue the biography you’ve been reading. You recently had the bed sequestered in the far corner of the block, pushed up against the junction of the two walls. You really only use it for sitting and card games. You’ve never used it for its intended purposes whenever he’s in earshot but there are still some stains on it. From coffee and coffee only. 

The biography is about Diudre Wiskio, the man who invented the modern restraints for helmsmen. It’s fascinating, really. You just can’t read it before you sleep. Wiskio promises that helmsmen are not really people after they’ve gone through their treatments, but the idea that maybe they’re still alive down there haunts you in your daymares. You are utterly enthralled and need to know more. You want to see the helmsman who powers the ship you’re on right now. 

“Hey, Kat!” you yell to him.

“What?!” he yells back, you can hear him perfectly fine over the running water.

“Do you think we have access to the helm?”

“Speak up! I can’t hear you!” His aurals are shit.

“I *said* do you think we have access to the helm?!”

He’s silent for a bit, only the sound of pounding water. “Why?!”

“I dunno! I think it’d just be cool to see the helm!”

“Oh no, you don’t! Don’t go changing your science field on us at the last minute!”

“No, no! It’s just... Do you think helmsmen are people, too?!”

The water turns off. “Duh, of course helmsmen are people. What else would they be?”

“No, like... Do you think helmsmen are still people after they’ve been plugged in?” 

“Of course? Stop being naive.” 

“Okay... Let’s say that that’s true. How the hell are you so casual about it? How do you put up with that?”

“I put up with it the same way I put up with being filthblood. I never had the delusion that Alternia cared about its citizens, so it was easy to believe. Then I just powered through because there’s nothing else to do about it.”

You put your bookmark back in and close the biography. You are no longer interested in the helm. 

________________________***********************______________________________

 

“Draw 4, motherfucker!” he says. You feel all friendliness drain out of you.

“You have all of the good cards and also I hate you.” you throw your cards down. “For the sake of our friendship, I think we should stop.”

“You are a wiggler, but alright. I accept your forfeit.” he starts picking up the cards and putting them back. “We still have an hour, though.”

“I know.” you shift uncomfortably on the bed and knock over your coffee. Again. You really can’t blame people for thinking you two are matesprits when he lives here and you are constantly laundering the bedsheets. “What about a game of Speed?”

“Ugh.” He sucks at Speed. “I guess! But you’re cleaning up this game and I sure as hell ain’t setting Speed up.” he hands you the rest of the Uno cards that he hasn’t cleaned up yet. It really isn’t anything he couldn’t do in a matter of seconds but you suppose it’s his final way of saying ‘fuck you’.

You are setting up a round of Speed when he hits you with “Aren’t you at least a little concerned about Johenn?”

“What?” you can’t hold a conversation when you have cards in your hands. “I guess? Why do you ask?”

“Just thinking.” he shrugs. “For all you like the guy, I thought you’d be a bit scared of him being killed by this staff-killer.”

“We don’t know that staff members are the target.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Wake up a little? Why do you think we keep having to recruit new faculty every time we come across another ship?”

“The only thing we know is that maroonbloods keep getting killed. That’s it. Johenn isn’t maroon.” You gesture to the game you’ve set up. “Ready to get your ass beat?”

“Yeah. Alright. Forgone conclusion. I will never win.” he picks up his cards. “But you still aren’t worried at least a little bit? I thought you really liked the guy?”

“Well, yeah, but... I feel like there was subtext there? I do care about him.”

“No, no. I worded that weirdly. Just... never mind.”

“Kat.” you pinch his cheek and adopt a ‘talking to a pet’ voice. “He could never replace my little meowbeast. I promise.”

“Fuck you! Oh my hell. Just start the game.”

_________________________**********************_____________________________

======> BE THE NEW CHEF

Your name is Gytrue Wepine and you were recently recruited to work on Fleet Yellow Jacket. You’ve been here for about 4 nights now, and you are still stunned by how nice this ship is. All of the knives in the kitchen are recently sharpened and all the countertops are so clean. You have no clue why anyone would want to trade into a new fleet after being here. 

You click your key into the door for your block and push it open. You’ve been working all night and are completely worn out. Maybe that’s why the others left? It sure is a hard schedule but you were raised on hard work and honestly it is just so thrilling. You are turning to your daystand to plug your phone into the charger when you hear a wet ‘shluick’. You immediately feel a tense ache in your back and grope around to find a tranquilizer dart stuck in you. You pull it out immediately but the dart has already done its trick. You feel woozy. You turn around to try to get a glimpse of your attacker.

As you lapse out of consciousness, the last thing you ever see is a long needle in a beautiful hand with many expensive rings on it. You heard the clink of glass and then you hear nothing at all.


	15. Chapter 15

"Sinomi is way too fuckin dense." You think to yourself. Or maybe you say it out loud? You're too tired to tell anymore and you've passed the point of "everything is funny" loopy and have hit "where the hell am I" loopy. You pick your poor, sleep-deprived body up off the floor after falling on your ass and take hold of a fistful of blanket. Despite your body hating you, this day was a good day. You passed a huge milestone with your project and also figured out that if you put your lab partner on a blanket, you can slide them around easier. You're brilliant. You could be a scienterrorist. You tug the blanket over to the far wall and lay Sinomi right next to the heating vent; bringing anyone back to their block is beyond your abilities right now. She may not be too happy with your choice when she wakes up but, hey, you weren't the one who fell asleep first. 

You straighten your back and look up at Larken, who has passed out on the keyboard. Good enough. You visually check to make sure she can breathe before putting your hand on the doorknob to leave. You open the door and immediately forget what you're doing. You close the door. 

___________*********_______

".........." You're not certain if you called him or if he called you. ".................hello?" you say when you remember that you have to talk to let Karkat know that you're there. 

"Yeah." he responds. That is not hello. "What do you want?" That is also not hello; you'll need to talk to him about his manners later. 

"Oh gee, what do I want.......? I called you, then?"

"....yup." he sounds exhausted. "Listen, do you know what time it is?"

"Nope! But I do remember what I was calling for."

"........"

"........"

"........... aaaaand what is it?"

"Oh! Yeah! I was just calling to ask you what I was doing."

You hear some not-so-muffled swearing in the other end. "Okay, so, here's what you're gonna do: you're gonna come back to our block and you're gonna sleep and, most importantly, you're gonna let me sleep. Can you do that?"

"Oh, man. That sounds wonderful. Can I do that?"

"I don't know, can you?"

"Hmmmm. I'm pretty smart. I think I can? Our block is, like, 200? 210? Somewhere in there."

"216."

"Aaaand the numbers get smaller as you go down the hall, right? Or bigger? I'm pretty sure it's one of those." 

"Okay! Fine! You got me!" he sounds exhausted. You can pretty much hear him throwing his hands up in frustration and possibly surrender. "Leave your door open so I'm not locked out, can you at least do that? I'm coming to get you."

"Awwwww. You're so nice. Thanks so much." you forgot what you're thanking him for already but you like complimenting Karkat, nobody compliments him enough, so you add "You're so nice" again. 

___________******_______

You wake up sputtering. Wool is gross and all the little hairs are impossible to get off your tongue. You're certain that you have a few wool strands plastered to your face with your own saliva. Once you've stretched and regained control of your hands, you pick a couple hairs out of the crease of your lips. Kat must have taken the coon and left you with the couch. Not too bad. You slept so soundly that you can't recall dreaming. 

You roll over and nearly fall off the couch. There's a light cracking out from under the ablution block door. Karkat's awake. 

"Hey, Kat-a-Tat!" 

"What?" 

"Good evening! Thanks for yesterday, by the way." You don't wait for a response before continuing "I've got some good news so listen up and don't interrupt!"

"Training is canceled today?"

"What? No. Kat-"

"'Sex and the Densely-Populated Urban Lawnring' has been renewed for another season?"

"You watch that garbage? No, no. Listen!"

"A violetblood 100 lightsweeps away wants to be my sugar daddy for absolutely nothing in return?"

"Karkat, please! You're awful. It's way better than all of those."

"Doubt it."

"Okay, fine." You take a deep breath and speak in your most confident voice "My poison is now compatible with all blood types, including O Negative."

You hear the door click unlocked. "Oh." He nudges the door open and sticks his head out to smile at you briefly, genuinely. "Congrats."

______****_______

 

"Thanks." you say when a mid-blood woman scoops some frozen sweet-something onto your tray. "And can I get your name?"

"Oh! Mine? It's, uh, it's Ashley." Ashley is visibly flustered. She probably took it as a flirtation. 

"Really? What a weird name." Realizing that was probably rude, you add hastily "Not a bad name! Just... a different one. Never heard it before."

"Yeah. A weird name from a weird lusus."

"Oh, I know what it's like to have a weird lusus. Mine was a barkbeast and I was constantly replacing furniture and flowerbeds."

"Oh, man, I feel you. My lusus was a hissbeast and naming me Ashley was about the least weird thing she did. Snakemoms, you know how they can be, am I right?" She smiles. 

"Yeah, totally." You really don't know but you realize you're holding up the dessert line so you end it with "Thanks, Ashley."

"No prob! Um....."

"Jaidye!" You shoot your name over your shoulder. There's hardly a point in her knowing. You are unlikely to see her again. 

You zone out a little as you head to your table, visualizing the lunch staff. "Desyut, Hyilki, Ashley. Desyut, Hyilki, Ashley." you repeat to yourself under your breath. You want to remember every faculty name you can. You'll check in on them with Johenn later. 

When you sit down at your table, Karkat already has your notebook and hands it over. "Who was that last chick? You talked to her for a bit."

"Her name is Ashley." You put the pen cap between your teeth and write down "Desyut, Hyilki, Ashley" in your long column of names. 

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I know, right?"

"That must be a weird lusus to give that name. Never heard it."

"Snakemoms, am I right?" you repeat her joke with a smile. 

"Sure? I don't know. Kind of a nonsense explanation, but sure." 

Your smile falters and you cough a little, closing your notebook. "Uh, so, plan. The plan is I skip the first bit of your training and I meet up with my lab mates to discuss the next leg of our project, now that we've got the O Negative down. How does that sound?" 

He frowns slightly. "You know I can't miss warmups, Jaidye."

"No, no. I would go to the lab, you would go to training."

".......And you would meet me in training later?" 

"Yep!"

"How much later?"

"A couple hours."

His frown darkens but he says nothing. 

"Maybe less?" You try.

"Okay, fine, sure." He gets up to throw his food out. You are pretty certain he isn't finished with his food, just this discussion. "You know where to find me."

__________******_______

Sinomi leans back onto her elbows. If she had gum right now, she would pop it. "Those circles are shit." she says. She's just so helpful like that. 

"Well, I'm trying at least! Just....be... not talking for a second." Larken says, annoyed. 

"Yikes. That's what it looks like when you *are* trying?"

"Sinomi, please." You snap. "Her circles have nothing to do with her plan..... Okay, they do. But it doesn't matter how nice they are, that's not the point!"

"Uggggh. We've been at this for forever!" Sinomi presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. "When are we gonna be done? I have a life, you know."

You whisper under your breath "Of course, I'm sure you have *many* friends who are all *dying* for you to hang out with them." Sinomi must have heard it, she glares daggers. 

Larken claps her hands together, looking like a schoolteacher desperately trying to keep her rowdy class of 3-sweep-olds together. "So, any new ideas?"

"It would be a lot easier if the poison was transferred by alien-to-alien. It's certainly slow enough that the hosts wouldn't die before it spreads. Maybe an STD? That'd be easy enough." Sinomi suggests. 

What Sinomi said is actually not a bad start, but you're sick of her attitude tonight and won't let it slide. "Alright, that sounds smart enough but we have no clue how the aliens reproduce so...."

"We know it's not through mitosis, at least." Larken smiles, trying to move the discussion onto practical application. "I think." 

"If they're anything like Jaidye, we should have no problem." Sinomi mutters under her breath, pointedly facing away from you. 

"I'm sorry, what? What was that?!" 

Sinomi sighs dramatically and rolls her eyes. "You're just so *insufferable* with him! He's not *that* cute. Certainly not cute enough to justify spending time with his bad attitude. I can't even *imagine* what he's like to live with. He must be real good if you're willing to overlook the rest of him just to keep him in your bed."

And that's when you shatter a beaker over her stupid little horns. 

_________*******________

In retrospect, you may have lost your cool for a minute. 

__________********_______

"Cool, calm, and collected. Cool, calm, and collected" you think to yourself. You can't let him see your limp. He would ask for all the details of the fight and you really aren't prepared to tell him why you tackled Sinomi. 

"Hey, Kat. What's up?"

"Nothing much. I'm up in a bit." he says. He nods to the current match going on. You must have missed all of warmups. Whoops. 

"Oh." you sit down next to him. "That's cool." 

"Yeah." Silence. "What did you get done in the lab?" 

"Oh! Nothing!" Wrong response. 

"Nothing? You did *nothing* in the lab?" He's unimpressed. 

"Well, nothing important." 

Silence. You move to sit next to him and he makes a face. Stares at your hip. 

"What's her last name?" he asks, face stone cold. 

"What? Who's last name?"

"Ashley. What's her last name? Weird, I bet. Exotic. You certainly have a type for weirdos."

"What?! I don't know?" 

"You don't even know her last name. I'm supposed to throw in the towel, and you don't even know her last name yet."

"What are you going on about? I have no idea what her last name is or what this has to do with anything."

"I see your limp. You didn't get anything done at the lab, huh? Wonder why. I can't imagine where else you would be." 

"Are you suggesting what I think you are?" Your cheeks burn with indignation. 

"Okay, you're right. A bit of a stretch. How about I talk to Sinomi and see where you were?" 

"Don't talk to her right now! Please!" Wrong response, again. 

Karkat opens his mouth to speak but is cut off by a call of his name. It's his turn to spar. He moves to stand up and you grab his shoulder. 

"Please. She hates me right now. I broke a beaker on her horns and tackled her to the ground."

He's obviously surprised. "You did what?! Why?"

"She made a crude joke on your behalf. Said that we were dating and that I was using you. Among other things." you admit, as fast as you can. His opponent is already set to go and is waiting on you. 

"Wait a minute, you hurt her. Because she said we were dating. And that was super offensive to you." His face is unreadable. 

"No! Not like that! I would be fine if she just accused me of dating you but-" 

"Accused?!"

"Bad wording! I didn't mean it! It's just that she thought we were dating and extrapolated some gross things from that. That's all." you *really* don't wanna have this conversation in front of his peers. 

"Wait." His voice goes all hurt-soft, like a bruise. "We aren't dating?"

Shit. That's too much. Too much today. You immediately turn to the door, bsod-style. You hear the match start behind you. There's two heavy, wet thuds and a time called. Match won by Threshecutioner Vantas in 3.2 seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to yall named Ashley, please don't take it personally. Also sorry to everyone who expected better of me than to make this chapter into a soap opera. 
> 
> I headcanon Karkat as having Borderline Personality Disorder and so this chapter makes a tiny bit more sense through those lenses. Even if you think I'm wrong about him being borderline, his characterization is still (hopefully) closely following canon


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter Kicked. My. Ass. This entire thing is basically me layering modge podge over a bunch of plot holes and hoping that's enough. If I have to look at this again, I'm gonna cry. 
> 
> Anyway, happy Valentine's Day!

======> BE THE TIRED-ASS THRESHECUTIONER

It's about 1:54. Military time. You idly wonder what time zone, but time zones probably don't matter in space. Only ever really mattered on the homeworld when you were trying to talk with a friend via Trollian or some shit. Maybe playing a virtual game co-op? You only ever really did that with Sollux. What time zone was he? Fuck, you wish you could sleep. 

It's unexpectedly hard to sleep in your own block now, after so long. You turn over in your 'coon. The slime is stale because you haven't changed it in perigees because you've been sleeping in Jaiyde's block because you thought she liked you. Fuck. You keep turning over in the same way that you flip a USB cord around when the plug doesn't fit right in either side the first time. You bet that if you shoved your head into the slime at the bottom, you'd fall asleep in about 4 minutes. It may not be fresher at the bottom, but you'd lose consciousness eventually. Might not be a bad idea right about now; you'd do anything for sleep. 

You've been thinking a little bit, a little bit too much for your fragile ego, and you've stumbled upon a realization. You're not the kind of person that people fall in love with. Which is fine. You aren't, per se, the absolute worst. You've got your virtues. But you aren't the kind of person that others would chase after, not the kind of person who is the subject of anyone's "love at first sight", not the kind of person that someone would dream about after passing you in a mall and wake up, breathless, with the words "Who *was* that?" on their tongue. Which is fine. If someone asked, you wouldn't *actually* call yourself "always second best" because that has a pretty negative connotation. You're more of an acquired taste. Which is fine. Someday, someone might see your smile, or how much effort you put into your calves, or how thoughtful you are when someone asks for your opinion on something truly important, and then that someone would say "You know what? Good enough." You will never be the best and that's a reality you are well-prepared to live with. No one wants you like you want to be wanted. 

Which is fine. 

You sink lower into the sopor and do some mental calculations. You're 8 and three-quarters. Your lifespan is about 12 sweeps (most likely. Who really knows, though? No one in your caste has ever lived out a full lifespan). By that measurement, you have 3 and one-quarter sweeps left. That's probably not long enough to meet another person who is willing to let you sleep in their block with them. After all, it took you almost 9 sweeps to meet just this one. But you might. If you do, you have a plan. You're gonna make the next one last and you're gonna get a domestic animal together and you're gonna settle down together in the suburbs of an average-sized metropolis. At least, that's the short version. You had a longer version mapped out when you thought you might make it through the long haul with Jaiyde, complete with narration and specific cinematography for certain dramatic bits. But that's just fantasy. It's fantasy and the truth is that you blew it and you aren't getting another shot within your short lifespan. 

You always kind of knew that your life was not romcom material. 

Which is fine. 

___________******__________

The good news is that you managed to fall asleep and also get a decent amount of unconscious hours under your belt to boot. The bad news is you overslept. By quite a bit. 

The bad news is that you missed warm-ups. The good news is that if Jaiyde wanted to catch you at practice this morning, she's probably left already. You...really don't wanna talk about it right now. 

When you slept on the couch, which was most days, you could get away with reusing some of yesternight's eyeliner. You can't do that after being submerged in slime. You're gonna need a shower. 

_________*********_____

Your showers were never short but that was an oddly long one, even for you. You're pathetic.

______***______

You considered not showing up today. Since your attendance is pretty good, people may have even wondered where you were. Man, that would feel good to have people concerned for you. But you're just a dreamer, not flat-out stupid, and couldn't convince yourself that anyone would give you a call if you missed practice. So here you are. 

Normally you'd just sit and wait for your name to be called, but normally you don't miss the entirety of warm-ups, so you do some of your favorite stretches while you wait. It's kind of weird to be the only one doing Superman Banana in a room full of people. It's also kind of weird to do a handstand and not see Jaiyde's face in front of you, making silly faces at you in between blowing her long hair out of her eyes. That mental image pangs deep in your chest and you almost fall. You didn't just lose a potential matesprit, you estranged an actual friend. 

Eventually, your name is called. You didn't even listen to hear who your opponent would be. You are in *the zone* and want to win fast and be done ASAP. Fighting is something you know, at least. It's something you can do reliably. No tricks that could break your heart, just your neck. Thank fuck. You square up, athletic position, weight on your front leg, sickle in your right hand. A whistle is blown and you are immediately thrown into defensive position. She must realize you're not in the mood for a long match because she refuses to let you out of an asinine loop of back-and-forth. You can't even move forward more than two feet, it's fucking ridiculous and you can't help but wonder why the hell she's doing this because she can't do anything particularly impressive here either. Both of you look like pupae that just barely dribbled out of the Mother Grub's overly-loose and open-sored nook and are now attempting to intimidate the other with some basic two-step dance moves. Cha-Cha real smooth now. You're on the verge of abandoning your sleuthing mission and just flat-out asking her wtf the fuck she's doing when you hear the referee's amused snort. You think you know what's going on now. 

"Time!" you call out. It's technically a question, but only technically. 

"4 minutes and 13 seconds." the referee cheerfully replies. 

Oh, come the fuck *on*. You just wanna be done for today. You haven't even stretched. You haven't eaten yet. You're sad. Why can't she just put on her big girl pants and let you win so you can go to sleep again?

After what seems like perigees, you decide you're 100% done with tonight. When she lets you in for your nth false opportunity, you decide to step back instead. She's clearly taken off guard, but when let her at your neck she does not disappoint. You're slammed into the ground. Blood rushes up to your ears and you have enough sense left in you to cover them. A time is called. You passed the ten-minute mark. Damn it. 

You peel yourself off the ground and excuse yourself. Let everyone think you're embarrassed over losing. Fuck them. You are way too eager to go back to your block and way too nervous over the welts that are surely forming on your neck to stay there. 

_________********_______

You know, if anyone saw your Netflix history right now, they would think that your Drew Barrymore binge means you're sobbing into a tub of frozen udder secretions. This would not be false, but you also sometimes just wanna watch Drew Barrymore in peace. She's a good actress. But you're sobbing anyway so you went the extra mile and got frozen udder secretions regardless. You're watching the one where she's plays a sad and lonely girl who has never been kissed. This is relatable because you are also sad and lonely and have never been kissed. Boy, you are not taking the end of your imaginary relationship well. 

You've got your phone square in your lap, thumb hovering over Jaiyde's number. You really oughta say something. After a minute of staring at the screen as if it was going to make the decision for you, you get a message. It's from Jaiyde. "we need to talk" it says. Yep. So it looks like the decision *was* made for you after all. You are absolutely not going to talk to her about it. You put your phone on silent. 

_________***********______

Whenever you're by yourself and watching a movie that has any kissing in it, which accounts for a large chunk of your life, you end up absent-mindedly running your finger over your bottom lip. This would be pretty embarrassing if you weren't, in fact, by yourself. It only makes sense that when the movie is getting to one of the good parts, someone decides to ruin it by knocking on your door. You quickly pause the movie. 

"Who is it?!" you yell out despite knowing full well who it is. Jaidye is the only one who ever talks to you. Because of this, you open the door without waiting for a response. 

....there is no one on the other side of the door. 

"Down here, dumbass!" says a voice from below your eye level. 

There is someone on the other side of the door. 

"Sinomi? What are you doing here?" You are honestly bewildered. What business could she possibly have with you?

Sinomi grinds the toes of her shoes in the ground and looks away from your face. "Well, I said some not-so-nice things about you in your absence. And, regardless of how true they may be, they weren't my place to say and it made Jaiyde mad at me. So, here I am, saying sorry to you so that, in a roundabout way, I say sorry to her. She seems to be really torn up about something so I'd appreciate you relaying the message to your..... friend, because she isn't talking to me right now." She clearly doesn't want to be near you for very long because as soon as she's done giving you her spiel, she closes your door for you. 

Huh. 

That was weird. It also wasn't much of an apology. Less of an "I'm sorry" than an "I'm sorry I'm in trouble". You would have said something if you weren't also terrible at communicating with Jaiyde. But apparently Jaidye is"really torn up about something", huh? You guess a Trollian message explaining to her what Sinomi just told you couldn't hurt. I mean, it's not like you gotta spill your guts for a message like that. But on the other hand, you steal a glance at the movie, it's not like you getting your shit together can't wait until Drew gets her shit together. You unpause the movie. 

___________**********__________

You didn't forget to text her, you're just a wimp. It's nearing morning by the time you have something worth sending to Jaiyde on your phone. Yet again, you're hovering right above the send button when your thumb is halted by a different voice at the door. It's Jaiyde. 

How did you convince yourself that she would allow you to brush her aside for this long?

You open the door. "Hello?" Your voice has a lilt at the end as if it were a question even though it's plain as night what she's calling about. 

"Did you get my message?"

"Yup."

"We need to talk."

"That is, in fact, what your message says."

She sighs. "I'm sorry, I fucked up. But can you at least wait a minute to hear what I'm thinking before jumping to the conclusion that we can't be friends anymore?"

"..."

"..... Okay, I'm taking that as a go-ahead. So," she takes a deep breath, "I had an argument with Sinomi, you know that, about my relationship with you."

"You're right. I did know that. Funny enough, she came by to tell me to tell you she's sorry because apparently she would rather interrupt my busy schedule than talk to you about your own damn business." 

"Really? That's weird. Because what basically happened was Sinomi said you suck and the only reason I kept you around was because of your sweet buns-"

"Wait, *what*?!"

"Let me finish. And I was all "nuh-uh" and leapt to defend your nubile yet virginal honor-"

"Jaiyde, *please* watch your phrasing!"

"You shoulda heard her phrasing, I'm sparing you here!"

"Doubt it, but continue."

"And I kinda sorta started a fistfight." At least she has the decency to be embarrassed by that last detail. 

"......and?"

"And that's it. That's, uh, that's the end of the story."

"Hm."

"Yup." She fidgets. 

"Well, I guess that's a lot better than what I originally thought." you reluctantly cede. 

A smile breaks across her face like a dam splitting open, flooding her face and washing away debris. "So that means we're cool, right?"

"If you still wanna be cool with each other after I metaphorically slammed the door on you yesterday?"

"Of course! But if you wanna say your apologies now rather than later that'd be cool, too."

"Yeah, alright. I'm sorry I shut you out. Pull out whatever religious text you wanna swear by, we're getting re-friendshipped under the fake fern in the lobby."

"Of course. I'll wear my nicest sneakers." She pulls you in for a hug. Her hair is really soft and when you lean in closer she mutters in your ear, "Was kinda hard to sleep alone." 

Oh. 

___________********__________

======> BE THE GENEROUS PATRON

You lost the fake nail on the index finger of your left hand (and are hoping like hell that that brainless janitor will just throw it away, not realizing it's evidence), but the rest of your left talons rhythmically tap against the clipboard. A new shipment of helmsworkers are due tomorrow and you have the prerogative of hiring them out of this abysmal pool of applicants. Each shipment somehow manages to top the previous one in how few certificates in engineering they can have while still scraping into your top ten. It's like the fuckin swillbloods don't even *try* because they know how quickly they would be beaten if any *real* competition ever decided to show up. Oh well, make it do or do without. 

You click the pen open on your cheek and absentmindedly circle the name of a maroon applicant. You assign them to block 214 and sign your name at the bottom, perfect legibility. First initial dot last name, just like they taught you in trade school, which you went to to get certifications and licenses, unlike the helmsworker applicants. 

You carefully tear off the paperwork at the dotted line and put it into your filing shelf. You can't afford to make mistakes when you're making important decisions for 12 hours from now. You flip to the next page when your phone beeps. Holy hell, do you hate group chats. You've never even responded to this one so you don't know why they haven't removed you yet. It's clear to anyone without cull-worthy eyes that you are no longer even a part of the STEM department, you've been promoted. You see, promotions happen when you have so many qualifications that you can be put anywhere. 

You open up the group chat simply to get rid of the notification, but your phone lags when you press the back arrow and freezes you on that page for a few seconds. Some beef was getting hashed out on that page and you want nothing of it, so you just turn your phone off and start reading about the next helmsworker applicant. There's always more work to do.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot? In /my/ fanfic? It's more likely than you think.

It happens during lunch. Up until now, there's been no structure to your science. No handholding, no checkups, and no due dates. If you were dangerously behind, you wouldn't know. But when you, and all the other scienterrorists (plus Kat), are called back into the amphitheater-style pocket room you occupied when you first arrived, you're given shocking news. The new shipment of laborers the ship received earlier tonight was just coming back from an exploration of Unjuin. When asked, the explorers informed the captain that the planet was a mere half-perigee away. 

Man, are you ever glad you've been working everynight. 

The girl next to you nearly fainted when she heard she had to be done in 2 weeks. Apparently, most others haven't gotten very far with their research yet. You and your clique, however, have recently started testing the diffusion system you think you'll use for the final product. You all have to carefully carry the little pods that house the poison to the communal vacuum-sealed fume chamber, though, or else it would kill every maroonblood on the ship. Luckily, there is rarely anyone else in line to use the fume chamber so your worknights haven't been too long. 

You give a knowing glance to Karkat, the kind that only two people who know each other inside and out can share, and head off to the lab together. 

____________***************___________

Your group chat is on fucking fire. Larken made quick friends with one of the new recruits and has gotten a lot of information out of him. She sends each new info bite as a separate text interspersed with emojis that make actually processing the information quite difficult. Every few minutes, you get a one phrase text from Sinomi, usually "proof?" or "wtf?".

It's very helpful for your concentration. 

What you managed to get out of all these jumbled texts is a confirmation that Unjuins do indeed have maroon blood, there is a massive glut of oxygen on their planet that makes their bugs huge, and that the Unjuins are tall, bipedal creatures with backwards knees and comically-large chest cavities. One of Larken's friend's friends says he once shot an Unjuin in the chest where the heart should be but hit mostly lungs instead. Frightened that they may not have the circulatory system you were counting on to make the bioweapon work, you ask if they have bloodpushers. Sinomi asks at the same time, "pics or it didn't happen". 

In the middle of a discussion on whether or not you think they've developed country music yet, Sinomi prompts, "Hey, isn't it a bad idea to leave Karkat alone in the fume chamber with more bombs than he has minutes of attention span?"

You don't respond. You're so wrapped up in this new world that you completely lose sight of your project. 

_________**********________

======> BE THE MAN WHO ISN'T EVEN GETTING PAID FOR THIS SHIT AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE

It isn't even detonating. You built this shit specifically to be volatile as fuck, but it won't even make those hissing/leaking sounds that you normally get when the rudimentary outer-plates are jammed. It's not that you did anything wrong, it's that the dumb thing doesn't wanna blow up. 

This blood bomb (or "blomb", as you like to call it) works by implosion. You put the poison and the explosive shit in two separate baggies and put those baggies in a metal soccerball filled with steam. The interlocking plates on the sports ball all crunch in at the same time when you spray it with cold water and that crushes the baggies and they mix together and blow up. Why don't they blow up until then? Why doesn't the explosive shit just explode before you give it a shower? You are a dumb kid who went to public schoolfeeds and you don't know these things. You'd ask Jaidye but she might get excited and actually answer you and you really don't give a frisbee-thrown fuck about Implodey Science. 

You kick the bomb. 

........ Nothing happens. You whip out your phone and shoot off a text to Jaidye. This one must be a dud. You pick it up, open the airlock, and step out. There's another bomb around here somewhere. Maybe tonight's testing session won't be all bad news? You throw the bomb into the junk receptacle and make a "whoosh" sound with your mouth. Nothin' but net. Hot /damn/ you are good at sportsball. You could probably have been on a professional team if athletes didn't suck hard shame globes in comparison to threshies. Unfortunately, there is very little out there in the wide expanse of space that is half as face-numbing, hysteria-inducing, skull-crushing, leave-a-bad-taste-in-your-mouth badass as being a threshecutioner. This leaves you with very few options as you are a certified badass. Literally certified, by the way; you have a license to be a badass on your official transcript. Damn, it feels good to ball hard.

Now where is that other bomb?

___________*************__________

======> BE COMPETENT

You receive a text telling you the bomb was a dud and immediately strut your walk stalks to the airlock. The bomb is a dud? That is not.... actually possible? You're going to have to explain what he's doing wrong again. Last time, he jammed the poor thing with the sheer amount of sweat on his palms. The time before, he had it implode prematurely by putting the bomb in the damn cooler for "easier transport". It's still in there. You don't know where you can take it out without killing anybody so it's still in your lab. Hell, it's like he doesn't even try to understand implosion science at all! 

When you get there, you don't see anyone in the fume chamber. What you do see is a pair of hooker heels poking out of the top of a junk receptacle. You clear your throat. 

The heels snap into the receptacle and are quickly replaced with a shock of messy hair and pretty eyes. "Oh, hey! So you know how there were two bombs? .....Either that or I'm going crazy. I'm either crazy or in trouble and I'd like to know which before I sacrifice any more of my cheerful disposition by playing bomb in a hay stack."

"There were two..."

"Shit!"

"...And you're fucked." you growl. "I leave you for, like, 8 minutes and I come back and the bomb has walked off on its own?!" 

"You know, Jaidye, I won't take your verbal abuse any longer, this isn't even my job. I don't know why I help you."

"Help? You've lost my bomb!"

"Oh, that's so sad because it takes you soooo long to make replicas of it."

"Way longer than it would have taken for you to let me finish reading!"

"Reading your texts? Sorry I interrupted with my being productive."

"Texts related to my job and you know it. Some of this is important stuff!"

"Oh, don't worry, I know exactly how important your reading is. Your books are always twice as important as your roommates, even in the middle of a game of Uno."

"........ You are so petty, and needy, and ridiculous. If you wanted sempai to notice you, you could have just asked instead of /losing her bomb/!"

"Now's not the time for your cartoon references, there is a bomb that sprouted strut stumps and it currently bumbling about this ship. Dangerous shit, you see. Besides, if this was some bug-eyed, flowery, stuttering episode of Transformers or something, I'd totally be the sempai in this friendship."

"Blatant lies and scandal! I can wield a gun twice your size and Transformers isn't even an anime!"

"Okay, but has sempai noticed /these/ guns?" he flexes for emphasis and you roll your gander bulbs so hard they almost detach from their holsters.

"You .....literally just called me sempai and I can't even tell if it was meant to be a joke or not. You're ridiculous, I'm sempai, and you /lost my bomb/ because you are still butthurt over a game of Uno. Unbelievable."

"Fuck you! I'm not mad over Uno; I won that round. I'm /also/ not a pupa bark beast who pisses on your rug to get you to look at me. If I wanted your attention, I would have asked you to date me already. Fucking hell, how desperate do you think I am?!" 

"............?"

"......"

"????"

"........ Shit..."

__________*********_________

======> BE THE ASSHOLE ON TOP OF THE WORLD

You feel a mile taller. The bomb is a little uncomfortable to carry in your bag, as most things of that shape are. The moron who was supposed to be guarding it was goofing off playing some kind of sport in the fume chamber and you just walked right off with it. You even stopped to tie your shoes in the middle of the heist before cinching the bag shut. You roll back your shoulders and throw open your office door. As soon as you pull up your chair, your immaculate claws close around a pen. You have your last piece of paperwork to file, a request to transfer to the homeworld. 

You shrug the bomb bag off your shoulders and tenderly lay it under your desk. On a clean sheet of paper, you bluff having gillrot. No fleet captain worthy of their title would keep a sickly seadweller on a ship far, far away from the healing facilities of the homeworld. Mitoba Fushig will be on the next direct flight to Alternia.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot thickens (^_−)−☆

"..................anyway," you say when you can think of absolutely nothing else to respond with "tell me when you find the bomb." And with that, like the accidental bitch you are, you walk out. 

____________***********___________

Reactions from you lab buddies varied. Larken, seeing it as a security breach, is calling the front desk and making sure it didn't reach the ventilation. A reasonable and responsible reaction, but you doubt that the secretaries care too much about the maybe 3 or 4 maroonbloods on the ship. Sinomi's reaction was a standard "who fuckin' cares?" complete with "what's the worst that could happen?".

You don't wanna know the worst that could happen. 

Being responsible, even slightly, for the death of 3 or 4 people would make you feel pretty bad. You know it's not that big of a deal, but how much would you like it if someone killed you? Not super much. When Larken tells you the front desk isn't answering, you sprint down there yourself. 

__________***********_________

You slam both palms against the office's plexiglass window. You felt pretty good being able to run the whole way down, but you were a little too oxygen-deprived to notice the Wet Floor sign. Peeling away your hands, you squint into the office. It looks like there's only one office person in there, and he is currently arguing with a seadweller holding a worn drawstring bag that has a 2edgy4you Aliice in Wonderland print on it. You stop staring once the figures disappear behind the dusty ghost of Handprints Past. 

You jiggle the handle to get into the office but it doesn't budge. Huh. You guess posh Mx. Seadweller over there wants the secretary's full attention. You go back over to the window. Wiping away your ghosty friend, you wonder why the door's locked. Maybe they're the boss and don't want to be interrupted while they bitch him out for letting their coffee get cold. Maybe they're informing him of the fact that they have two perigees to live, and that they always loved him. Your mind wanders a little bit, running through various dramatic possibilities, but snaps back to a juicier reality when the dust is clear and you see the secretary fondling the seadweller's gill. Oh geez, oh geez. Maybe the two are having an affair. Maybe you're watching an affair take place. Oh shit, oh shit. Maybe they can see you. You drop to the ground, out of sight. 

Your knees hurt but your dignity is intact. Wouldn't wanna be caught watching two people do, like, ....things! And stuff! Ugh. You do, however, army crawl over to the door to listen through the cracks. 

It seems as though Seadweller McEdgy is sitting on the desk and getting an "examination". Holy shit. You're doing this. You're really, actually, truly eavesdropping on real actual people doing real actual...... stuff! 

Your phone goes off. 

You rip your phone out of your pocket so fast it could give you rugburn and accidentally launch it across the room. It skips over the tile floors like a xylophone playing a measure of Flight of the Bumbling Flower Pollinator. Fuck. You scamper over there, pump biscuit pounding in your ears like a war drum. It's a text from Kat. Fuuuuuck. You really don't want to have the conversation he probably wants to have with you right now. 

It reads, "Sorry I made you uncomfortable. And lost your bomb. It really wasn't my intention. Can we talk about this?". Ugh! He's giving you textual pupa barkbeast eyes! And being polite! What the fuck?! You don't have time for this, you reason to yourself, and stuff the phone back into your pocket. 

Sitting against the door with Karkat on your mind is absolute torture. He's such a fun-sucker. Even the actual conversation seems duller; everything is about visas and health records. Gross. Doesn't mean you still aren't listening like a nosy shit, but it is significantly less fun. It seems the seadweller even got off the table. Maybe they had an argument in those crucial seconds you were gone? Son of a bitch. 

Son of a bitch! Someone just fucking kicked you! You're lying limbs akimbo on the floor, pain tango-ing all up your hip and back. You lift your head up to find a foot in your face and a voice in your ear. 

"What the hell?! Who was that?!" the seadweller asks. 

Shame rolls up your shoulders and into the tips of your ears, burning. You were caught in the least dignified way doing one of the least dignified things you've ever done. And that's saying something, because you used to be six sweeps old and think you had cool, original ideas for video game OCs. You rise to your feet and stretch out your hand, swallowing your shame like peanut butter on the roof of your mouth. 

"Sorry about that!" You say, truthfully. "I was leaning over to pick up my phone." You lie, untruthfully. 

They glare at you, but say nothing. Once they get back to their feet, they turn around to pick up their bag, which rolled some 10 or so feet towards the elevator you forgot to take on the way down here. That's when you see it. Your bomb. 

"That's mine...." You whisper to yourself. But it's too late. It's already slung over their shoulder and making its way to the elevator. 

"Uh, uhm, sorry! But, uh, Mx.? Mx.?! Where did you get that? I lost something like that earlier today!" You shout after them. They make no signal that they heard you. You fast walk over to them. "Now, I'm not accusing you of anything! I'm not! But could you tell me where you got that!?" 

The elevator door closes right before you reach it. Dammit! You try to recall every feature you could of that troll's. Large shoe size comes first, as that was closest to your eyes. Good nails, long, comes next from watching them close the bag. Tall. Bob haircut. 

You text Karkat back, but not with what he wanted to hear. 

"I found the bomb! It was stolen by this seadweller who's pretty tall with short hair. Edgy bag. Can't talk about feelings rn. Please try to catch them. Brb!" You hear an alert, the Spell text tone, Karkat's, but don't take a spare second to check it. 

You swish through the door, clinging to its frame while spinning around the corner, and nearly smack into the secretary. Yikes. You are not on your game today. 

"What was that person doing here?" You ask. 

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"That seadweller person. What were they doing here just a moment ago?"

"I... I'm afraid that's classified, miss." He looks obviously startled. 

"I really gotta know. I don't think you got wind of this, but you can check your voicemails and know that a bomb recently went missing."

"Wait, you've been listening to my voicemails?!"

"I have not, but that's not the point. Anyway, I have reason to believe they stole my bomb." You put your hand out to stop him from leaving. It's a little aggressive, you know this, but you don't care. "Please. It's a safety issue."

___________*************___________

 

======> BE THE HEARTBROKEN ASSHAT

She didn't have to fall into your arms and kiss your jaw the way you fantasized she would when you planned out elaborate ways to ask her out. She didn't even have to agree to give it a shot. But, she certainly didn't have to be so mean about saying no. 

You tell yourself you'll save your breakdown for later, when you have time, but your contour is still cut in some places with hot, stinging tears rolling through and taking your makeup with it off your cheeks and onto the floor. 

It's not fair. Well, actually, it is fair. You would have done much worse if you were as cool as her and someone as mean-spirited and gross as you fumbled those words out. But still, it's not fair that everyone has a soulmate that likes them except you. Hell, your lame pacifist troublemaker of an ancestor even had someone to sleep next to. 

Well, you technically also had someone to sleep in the close proximity of. Had. No way in hell she's gonna let your predatory, voyeuristic ass near her block again. She trusted you. She trusted you and you fell for her. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

This isn't even your biggest problem right now. The biggest problem is some seadweller fuck stole a bomb and you've been trusted to find it. You can't believe she still trusts you after you totally took advantage of her kindness to watch her sleep and scratch her back. You can't believe she still trusts you after you freaked out on her for thinking she was "cheating" in a relationship she didn't have. You can't believe she trusts you after you lost her perigees worth of hard work. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

You won't let her down again. You're gonna catch that slimy fuckin' gillfaced, criminally-rich thief. 

__________************__________

======> BE THE PANICKED PROTAGONIST

"Alternia!?" You can't believe it. "That bomb cannot go to Alternia!"

"I'm so sorry, miss, but I've already given them their passport. I can't stop them if I tried!" He looks as worried as you. 

You press your hands into your eyes. "What can we do?" You moan. 

"Well, I can't order a retrieval mission, or even void their passport."

"......? But?"

"But nothing. That's it."

You slump into your seat, and start to cry. 

The secretary jumps to his feet. "Please don't do this. Please. Oh hell. Please don't cry in my office."

"Who knows how many people that can kill?!" You sob. 

"Now, now, dear. Not more than 30 is statistically likely." He pats your shoulder. 

"They could put it in the... *hic* they could put it in the vents in, like, *hic* in a communal hivestem in some poor *hic* part of town and kill everybody there."

"That's putting a lot of faith in your invention. I don't think that's probable, hon."

Your eyes fly open in horror. "Or the maroon seating area in an airport. Those trolls would fly to wherever and infect their friends and quadrants." You shake him to emphasize the importance of this revelation. "They wouldn't even know they were infected until a handful of night later when they'd drop dead."

"Okay, okay. That's bad." He takes a moment to think before slamming a form on his desk and looking you dead in the eyes. "What's your name, hon?"

"Oh, uh, it's Jaiyde Harley. Why do you ask?" You blot at your eyes as he furiously jots your name down on the form. 

"Well, Jaidye Harley, I recommend calling up your most-trusted sidekicks and telling them to drop everything." He says while still writing like a hurricane. "Because you're all going to Alternia." He slams down your passport. 

"Wait, what?" You love it here, being a scienterrorist is your dream. "I don't know if I can do that?!"

"You had better figure it out soon, then. Because that thief back there," he jabs his thumb over his shoulder, towards the door. "Is leaving next night and you still have to pack." 

"I still have to pack..... Oh man, I've still got so much work to do!" You jump out of your seat and pull up the group chat on your phone. 

"So I guess that's your answer. I mean, you are the only immediate choice for this. It kind of wasn't a question." He says. 

You turn around to face him. "And what about you?"

He's visibly taken aback. "What about me?"

"Aren't you coming along?"

"No? This is your thing." 

"But it could be your thing."

"It could also be your thing and your thing alone. I haven't even given you my name." 

"If I guess it, will you come with me?"

"Who are you? Rumpelstiltskin? That's no basis for critical decision making!" 

"Nope! I'm Jaidye Harley! And you're.....-" you glance at the name plate on his desk, "Ewktou Brunsk!"

"First of all, you cheated and I saw you. Secondly, that's my co-worker's name, not mine. He forgot to replace it after his shift ended two hours ago. And, last but not least, I never agreed to go with you on those grounds."

You fling your arm around his shoulder. "I can see you have a good bloodpusher in your chest, not-Ewktou. Wouldn't it just tear you apart if something were to happen outside of your control?"

"Get your hand off me, miss! My name is not not-Ewktou, it's Deryui and I don't have a bloodpusher."

"C'mon, think of the maroonbloods!"

"Please leave me be." He stands up and waves your passport in your face. 

"Wait, Deryui? That's a lowblood Eastern Plains name if I ever heard one. What's your blood?" 

"With all due respect, that's none of your damn business."

"Definitely a maroonblood."

"Hey!"

"Think of your fellow people, Deryui!"

"Why do you even want me to come along? We just met." He sounds exhausted. 

"Frankly, I could use all the friends I can round up." You take your passport and look Deryui in the eyes. "Do you wanna save your fellow maroons or not?"

___________****************_________

 

You, Karkat, Sinomi, Larken, and Deryui all arrived plenty early to get on the ship. The hope was to catch Mitoba before they entered the ship, confiscate the bomb, and go back to everyday life. This is made difficult by the fact that Mitoba is nowhere in sight and you five are being boarded right now. You look over your shoulder and give a grin to your friends, staying strong and confident for them. You grab Karkat's hand, unsure of what you are to each other, but knowing that whatever relationship it is, it's too good to let go of. With a deep breath and a chin held up high, you step aboard the ship to Alternia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just letting y'all know, I base the update speed for this fic around how much I gauge y'all's interest in this to be. I'm not that ff.net author that refuses to post a chapter until they get 50 comments, but I would like to see how much people care about this fic before I spend too much time/effort on these chapters. Thanks for reading! :)


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is mostly character stuff with a huge plot push at the end  
> Also, give that song a listen. its really something

I can't offer you a rescue, but I can tell you what I'd do  
I'd tell my mother that I love her dearly  
And tell my father that I need him back again  
And if these words won't drop from your lips  
I will be your freudian slip  
\- The Wombats "Walking Disasters"

 

You've pulled out one eargrub so you can lay more comfortably on the ablution block's tile. The synth hammers into your other aural canal, drowning the nerves in the left side of your head like a stroke. The other side of your head, however, is ablaze with panic. You roll your head so the coolness of the tile gently presses onto the heat of your forehead. "In... Out. In.... Out." you think to yourself, chest heaving into the coolness on the inhale. Your worry washes over you in waves, timed with the off-beats of your breath, that makes your heartbeat irregular. 

You are so impulsive and so, so stupid. 

How long have you worked on getting into that fleet? How many years of study went into being chosen for that mission? How likely are you to be able to just jump back into the fray again with a handwave and a "sorry I'm late"? 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

You may have just handed in your resignation with a smile back there. And for what? A couple of short-lifespanned lowblood kids? 

No. 

No, don't be like that. Their lives are all worth something. Maybe they wanted to be scienterrorists too. Don't they deserve a shot at the life you just possibly gave a Viking funeral to? You mentally chastise yourself for your inadvertent casteism. That was rude of you. Short lifespans can be rich and fulfilling too. Like a certain threshie you know. And who even knows how long he's-

"Jaiyde you're never going to believe this but the ship has a pool. I haven't been in a pool since I hopped the fence into my neighbor's when I was 5. We gotta go." A pause indicates that he has noticed you are not in your respite block. "Jaiyde? Jaiyde?! You can't possibly be out socializing because I'm basically your best friend and there's no- Oh, there you are." 

He's standing over you, biting into an apple. You have no idea where he got it, there's no way the mess hall is open for lunch this early. 

"How the fuck did you get in?!" You never gave him the code to your padlock. 

"Just guessed your wriggling day and it let me in. That's kind of a security hazard. You really don't want just anybody guessing your code and waltzing in." 

"Oh, yeah. I'll make sure that nobody can just guess the password." you say, voice flat. "Don't want any unwelcome guests."

Sometimes you feel like the owner of a particularly stupid pet crab, because if there's one thing he is not, it's self-aware. You pull out the other eargrub and turn the music off. 

"You heard my little spiel, right? About the pool?" He says. 

"Yes, yes, I heard it." you eye him meaningfully, "But you know this isn't a cruise."

He deflates. "I... guess you're right." A thought visibly pops into his head when he says "You're not still mad at me, right?"

"No, no, Kat that's not-"

"Because I said I'm sorry already!" He lashes out briefly before reigning himself back in, "and I mean it. I do. I'm sorry I made this.... how it is." 

"It's fine, Kat, it is. Can we just- *sigh* can we just go back to being friends? It's important to me. /You're/ important to me." 

He swells with your words. "Yeah, thanks, I mean. It's- you're important to me too." He smiles and sits next to you on the tile. "So, like, after this killer gets got, /then/ can we go swimming? I'm still pretty psyched about swimming."

You laugh. "I can see that. Hmmmm. Maybe. If I'm feeling generous."

"You suck. I'm getting a new friend."

"From where?"

"The vacuum of space."

"That was... a quick response. You been thinking about it or do you just default into the most readily available thing that'll kill you?"

"I dunno, man. Space would treat me right. Space would go swimming with me." He teases. 

"Oh, fine, you dishrag! I'll go swimming." You genuinely love swimming, growing up on an island and all, you just love teasing him more. 

He smiles, content, before another thought courses through him. "Hey, uh, can I tell you something?"

Given his last revelation to you, you are a bit uneasy when you say, "Of course."

"Well, this is gonna sound stupid, not to mention dumb and also- Ugh!" He covers his eyes with his hands before letting out, all in one breath, "I don't wanna be a threshecutioner."

Wait, what?

"Wait, what?"

"I just- *heavy sigh* wish I didn't have to hurt people anymore."

"I.. That makes sense. I guess. I mean, those maroons that could be killed. I don't want them dead. That's the whole thing, you know?" You say, very coherent. 

"Yeah. Yeah, and those too. But also. Everybody."

"You don't want everybody dead? Or, more like, you want nobody dead. At all?" 

"Yeah. That's... Yeah."

A silence creeps her many wicked, gnarled fingers between the two of you, wrenching you and him apart with an emotional chasm that only the hands of silence can inhabit. You feel so very distant to the person sitting next to you. You don't understand him. 

"Then, why? Why did you- Why are you... You?"

"I didn't want blood, or at least, I don't want blood, now. I just wanted respect. All I ever wanted was respect. And you know who got respect? Her Imperious Condescension's Threshecutioner Fleet. So, you know. You do the math." 

".... There are other ways to-" you grasp at straws, "Diplomacy! Diplomacy is right up your alley."

"You think that was something a streetrat would think is available to them? It's not! It wasn't! All I knew was hurt. All I could /do/ was hurt. All I /can/ do is hurt!" He slumps himself against the counter, apparently exhausted by pushing that out there. 

You jump the chasm and wrap your arms around this strange being you still don't understand but, at the same time, still love. "You- We can figure it out later. We just need to kill this person. Or I'll kill them. Or, like, capture? Capture them. And then we can go swimming. And then we'll figure it out. I promise. Me and you."

"You and me?" 

You laugh. He always has time to be a word nerd. "You and me and me and you."

He laughs through his nose, a puff against your shoulder. "Okay. And, uh, thanks. Thanks a lot."

________************________

"So you told the kid off for wanting to relax, and then you go and do this?" 

"Well, yeah! It seemed like the responsible thing to do at the time." You throw your hands up. 

"Hey, hey! Stop moving! And he, apparently, has never been to someplace fancy enough to have a pool before? How is that possible? Karkat is a higher highblood than me!"

"Well. Um. You see. He had lusus problems as a child. A, uh, irresponsible, constantly-absent lusus. So he had to stay back at his hive most of the always." 

"......Ohkaaay. Sure. But the point still stands that you told him he couldn't lay back and have fun, that there's urgent work to do, but somehow you have time to model for me. What were you /thinking/ back there?" Simoni says, jabbing her sketch pencil at you accusatorially. You get the feeling that if you mimicked her, she'd throw it at you. 

"I was just caught up in a... a moment." You verbally handwave. 

"... What kind of moment?"

"Nothing! Nothing, really it was nothing." You don't like unloading your personal issues into others. Silly as you are, you like to be the solid foundation in all your friend groups. An immovable rock of support, not angst. 

"You were having a 'moment' with him, doing 'nothing'?" she accuses. You can't look away without her yelling at you and/or throwing things so you are forced to meet her smug gaze. 

"No! I was having the moment before he came in. Well, actually, he came in during." You're a bit flustered, you'll admit. 

"Hold on, lemme get this straight. You were having a 'moment' by yourself when he came in and you were too distracted to make clear thoughts?"

"Stop it!" You are bright olive all over your face, shoulders, and neck. "There was no moment. Forget it!" 

Sinomi curls in on herself with the ship-shaking force of her laughter. "Alright, okay, sure. What /were/ you thinking though? That the bomb was already on a timer and it was gonna blow on the ship? It's pretty obviously headed to Alternia. We have time, about three perigees of it." 

"I know. I'm just- I'm uneasy about the whole thing. I don't /want/ three perigees. I want it over with /now/!" 

"And then what would you do? What do we do after this? You know this ship will continue heading back to the homeplanet regardless of how quickly we kill Mitoba, right?" She gives a heavy sigh, "What do we do then? We'll all be so far away from Unjuin." 

"I... I'll talk to Deryui. Maybe he has some insight on the next transfer to Unjuin. Maybe it won't be a whole 6 perigees until we get back. Maybe if we are really super lucky, we can get this over with and be the third or fourth fleet to arrive?" 

"You do that. But later. I haven't even decided if I'm gonna ink this or do watercolor yet. What do you think?"

"Uhhh. Both?"

"Hmmmm. Not bad, I'll think about it. Stay still."

___________**************____________

"You were a bit difficult to catch. Busy much?" You lean against his desk rather than sit. 

"You know, some of us have jobs. Jobs that matter and work to be done." He looks down at the papers in his incoming mail slot and mutters "More work to be done than before, that's for sure." 

"Sorry, sorry. I was just wondering if you had time to look at the transfer schedules?"

He nearly bursts into tears at that. "Holy fucking shit, Jaiyde! We just got here!" He collects himself and jabs a stern finger in your face "You, miss, are a /troublemaker/." 

"Not right now! Really! I was just wondering in advance so I don't spring it on you at the last second again."

He calms at that. "Thank you, but I don't have time right now. If you want to schedule an appointment, I will get you a transfer. But not now, I'm busy." Deryui points to a clipboard mounted on the wall. 

The next time available is 11:15-11:30 on Tuesday. Three nights. You sigh and write down your name. You'll tell the group chat about it later. Exiting the office, you hope to yourself that you are never as stressed as him. 

____________************_____________

As soon as you sit down on your concupiscent platform and start taking off your shoes, Karkat wanders out of your ablution chamber. You are too tired to ask. He carries a brochure. Again, you are too tired to ask. 

"Did you know that there's competitive sports on the plaza every day? Do you think it's too late to join a team? I mean, like, if we don't transfer out too soon, of course."

"No." You lay down. 

"Okay, but what was that an answer to?" He looks up from his brochure. "Wait, hey. You alright?" 

"I'm just- You mind sitting down?" You pat the spot on the platform next to you and he takes you up on the offer. "I'm just stressed. I'm sick of thinking. I just wanna relax, take the easy way out, put my guard down. I'm sick of playing." 

He makes himself level with you and slides a comforting arm, just what you needed, behind your back. "I'm sorry. I know what you mean. Hey! You know what could help? Going swi-"

You grab him by the neck and slam his lips onto yours. You're done with playing games and it's such a relief. It's not.... magical or anything, especially given that he isn't moving, but it is such a powerful release you could cry. You tug harder on his neck and press more insistently on his mouth, trying to get a response. After what seems like forever, he stutters to life, slowly moving in tandem with you. It's still not magical, you being pretty awkward and him being /really/ awkward, but it's just what you needed. His hand around your waist clenches your shirt and pulls your chest flush with his. A few moments of just being together pass before you pull away. 

"So.... I guess this means you aren't mad at me?" He says. He really is the least self-aware person you know. 

"No, Kat, I'm really, really not."

"Does this mean we can date now?"

"Yeah, it does. And you know what our first date should be?"

He cocks his head before smiling. "Swimming?"

"Swimming."


End file.
